Somewhere along the lines, we have been taught to speak badly of other women.
If you’re new to the channel, I’m Olivia S. Benson, and I have to use the S because without the S it might refer to Taylor Swift’s cat or Mariska Hargitay on, what is it, Law and Order SVU or Criminal Minds, I’m not sure which one. But I am Olivia S. Benson, and I am the author of a new book which is titled For the Love of My Father, and the subtitle of it is A Spiritual Guide for Women Healing from the Absence of a Father in the Age of Spiritual Evolution. If you’ve come to the channel before, you know that the channel, at this moment anyway, is all about discussing different aspects of the book, different chapters and different subjects.
My website is OliviaSBenson.com. I have products based on not only this book but my prior book, t-shirts and cups and things along those lines. In any event, this week I would like to discuss a little bit about issues that women have with each other. This seemingly is a continuing problem, and before I go any further, let me say this.
I Really Care About Acknowledging Progress
I’m one of those people that really cares about acknowledging progress. We’ve made an amazing amount of progress with regards to women’s rights, women’s issues and our position as women in the world. I think it’s always important to acknowledge what has occurred rather than to continue to complain about what has not happened.
The first thing is that we have come a far, far way in terms of women’s rights and women’s issues. Now, we have not come as far as we need to come, because even as some might put it in the west, there has been significant progress, but there are other places in the world in which there hasn’t been that much progress and there are still significant issues. We cannot pretend that those things are not happening. They are.
Women are still suffering a great deal, restricted in many, many ways around the world, and there remains a great deal of work to be done both in the west, as we call it, and in other parts of the world. But nonetheless, we’ve come a significant way.
One of My Pet Peeves
In the book, I talk a couple of times about some pet peeves that I have, and one of the pet peeves is, of course, the way that women tend to treat each other. It’s a significant issue, because it’s sort of a feeling that — and I make jokes about this — you can hardly get most guys to admit that another guy, he doesn’t even have to know the other guy, but if you wanted to get a guy to admit that somebody that he doesn’t even know, another guy doesn’t even know, did something wrong, you would have a very difficult time, and he doesn’t even have to know this person. He just, as a matter of course, would, generally speaking, deny that the person did anything, or maybe have some kind of explanation.
Now, as many of you know, with women, it is, generally speaking, the opposite. Women generally are known to turn on each other at the drop of a dime. You don’t even have to say two words, and they will, without a question, bad mouth someone else, another woman, reach the worst conclusion possible, in many cases, be extremely unsupportive for no apparent reason.
I Call It the Underprivileged Syndrome
I have a name for it. I call it the underprivileged syndrome, and that generally means that you find yourself in a group that is not in the majority and is not privileged as the majority. And majority is an interesting term to use in terms of a discussion about women, because generally speaking, the world is 50-50 male and female, but nonetheless, women find themselves in this kind of underprivileged situation for a number of different reasons, and they act accordingly.
Usually, when you have a person or people in a certain position of disparity, there’s always a tendency to try to get into a higher position, to put others down so that you can curry favor. There’s series of things that people do. In every war, there’s been a traitor that tried to get favor by disclosing some information or turning someone into the other side. It’s a thing, and so I find that, for example, it seems as though certain women find it advantageous to try to make sure that other women are kept down, and it’s almost subconscious.
It seems like it’s subconscious that they would feel that rather than doing something positive to support another woman, they would do something negative to keep that woman at a disadvantage. It is what I call a syndrome, and it’s important to consider how we address it at this particular time, because this is a moment in which women need to come into themselves, need to be prepared to get into all the right places, to be prepared to sit at all the right tables. And that syndrome, in many cases, is subconscious. You don’t even realize it. You don’t even realize why you are mad at the other woman, or why you would have an immediate negative reaction to another woman.
Anytime You Live by a Generality, You Should Question Yourself
I’ve had people say to me many times, and for example, they would say that legal assistants prefer to work with a male attorney rather than work with a female attorney. I have that verified without a question. Now, I personally have not had an issue with that, but I know people who say it all the time.
Now, it’s interesting, because frequently they would say even if the male is very distant, even if he is a very strict boss, even if they don’t have a personal relationship, they would rather work with a male attorney rather than a female attorney. And it’s a broad generalization. Obviously, every female attorney is not the same, but that in and of itself is an indication of a state of mind.
Anytime you live by a generality, you should question yourself. All of nothing are nothing. In other words, all women don’t behave the same. All people of African descent don’t behave the same. All Jewish people don’t behave the same. All Asians don’t behave the same, and all women don’t behave the same.
So, when you have those broad generalizations that you’re living by, and you have the capacity as a woman to then basically categorize all women attorneys in a certain way and basically say something very, very negative about them — and you’re a woman yourself, and you would not appreciate another person generalizing about you or claiming that you have any certain kind of behavior that is not particularly applicable to you. So, here we have a situation in which women would just broadly, negatively categorize another woman.
It’s just something that is a syndrome that we carry generationally. Somewhere along the lines, we have been taught to speak badly of other women, to disregard other women, and to have subconscious thoughts. They can’t be trusted. They’re scheming. They’re manipulative. They’re just things that we see on TV, or we used to see on TV. Therefore, we believe them and we carry them with us everywhere that we go. It’s projected in our relationships.
Daddy Issues Are Significant
Now, part of the theme of the book is that we have many women around the world that have issues with their fathers. They’ve had absent fathers. This is a big issue that needs to be resolved so that there’s one less piece of baggage that women are walking around.
Daddy issues are significant. They have a significant impact. It helps to continue to recreate the cycle of fatherlessness. Young girls who grew up without a father are more likely to have children way too early, or to become single mothers. So, it’s important to stop this cycle.
Now, if we can address this issue of fatherlessness and get women to heal it, they will be better prepared to move forward in the world, to take their rightful position in all the tables around the world. I do talk about it in the book. The issues that women have with each other are also significant.
How can we get to a place where we are taken seriously when we ourselves have a tendency to be really — I’m trying to use a good word — but really to be in many ways wicked with each other? It should be quite the opposite. We should be treating each other with care and kindness, knowing the struggles that we have invariably all faced and that we face as women trying to make our way in the world.
You would expect, or you would hope, that it would be quite the opposite. That we would be supportive, and that we would also be willing to see someone else advance and be happy for that person. That would be the ideal. Now, it’s not always easy, because those are just human feelings. Maybe we’re jealous, we’re envious, or whatever the case might be, but ultimately what we’d like to see is women being willing to support other women, because ultimately we know that it will be beneficial for us. If it’s not directly beneficial for us, it would certainly be beneficial for the generations coming down the pike.
Oh, You’re So Simple
Since we’re celebrating Women’s History Month, this is the month of March, I thought it would be appropriate for us to explore those little details. I can remember many years ago, more than 20 years ago, when I was getting married for the first time, someone in my family circle said to me — and I was very, very young when I got married the first time — she sort of looked at me and she said, oh, you’re so simple. I was very young and very innocent in many, many ways, and I really didn’t even understand what she meant by that.
If she meant, for example, that I had not gone crazy with the wedding, or maybe gone crazy with the spending, or maybe gone crazy with my dress, or not gone crazy with what I was requiring for the wedding, I could not understand why that would make me simple. But in a moment where a young woman was getting married and really working within her means and doing the best that she could, the nicest thing that she could say to me was that I was simple.
Now that always stuck with me, that she had said that, because I really never understood what she meant, but I knew it wasn’t a positive. I knew it wasn’t nice, and she wasn’t intending it to be nice, and I knew that she wasn’t being supportive, and it was just a jab that she made at that particular time. And I always sort of remembered that she had said that, and remembered that she had been unkind in making that statement at that particular time.
This is a tiny little example of things that women do to each other. There was no reason for that, and I’m just giving you that as a small example. There was no reason for that, and the expectation would be quite the opposite. You’re getting married. It’s a lovely time. Why would I sort of say something so negative, to sort of put somebody down with really no reason?
Those are the little things that can tell about how a woman treats another woman, and it’s reflective of a lot of different things. It could be jealousy. It could be envy. It could be anything. But in a moment like that, the ideal would be to say, you know, congratulations on your wedding, I hope everything goes well. Not that you’re so simple.
But to wrap up, I would like to say that many, many, many moons later, many years later, I would be grateful to hear that I’m simple, because that simplicity is what makes life really bearable and interesting. You don’t have to be complicated, and you just have to understand what life is about, understand how to treat other people, understand what it means to be a woman in this world at this particular time, and be willing to be respectful of other women, to be supportive, to be kind, to be generous, and to make a way to help other women in the world.
Of course, you want to help everyone, but particularly today, I’m talking about women helping other women, so that we would all be prepared to take our place at the table of world affairs. We’ll continue talking about women and how we treat each other.