TILT # 47 - Being courageous is not comfortable

I've been reading various articles on the 32nd anniversary of the massacre at the École Polytechnique at the Université de Montréal on December 6th, 1989. I was a student at McGill University at the time of this tragedy. This horrible, horrific shock led to a Parliamentary report entitled, "The War against Women". There is disagreement on whether this report brought about any change or enough change decades later.

Commemorative plaque of victim names at Université de Montréal

For me in my own little world, today was my next step towards change. I named a male colleague's disconfirmation of a female colleague. Even though I had recently introduced my female colleague into an e-mail thread, her name was not included in the subsequent mailing list of a group event happening in a month's time. That she was excluded by a man who has continuously shown flippant disregard for others did not sit well with me. What I came to realize is that by excluding her name, this also showed that I myself was not listened to. My efforts to include her were ignored.

Wow.

I could have stayed silent. I tried to stay silent. I did not stay silent.

I pointed out to my male colleague that because I was grading undergraduate presentations on communications and interpersonal relationships and was therefore looking at what to avoid, including disconfirmation i.e not acknowledging someone's value or presence (this male colleague has a pattern of doing this), I wanted to mention that I felt acutely, the absence of my female colleague's name on the mailing list.

It was not an easy thing for me to do because I am not a sh*t disturber nor do I rock boats. I try to be a peacemaker and accommodate everyone the best I can. Some will say I'm spineless as I'm too nice. Others will call me out for the way I spoke up as someone did.

What can I say? I cannot please everyone all the time. I can however, receive feedback about the way I gave my own feedback and find a way of handling such uncomfortable choices with more finesse the next time. And there will be a next time.

Certainly, the first time doing something I considered unpleasant but necessary took a lot of courage for me. It made me want to throw up. What to do when your gut screams something needs to be said but your mind rationalizes that it's okay, that some people never change, to leave them be.

Well, just like others have the choice to not change, I have the choice TO change. I guess today, I decided to keep taking steps not to support behaviour that continues to oppress me and those like me. I simply said what I saw and heard and the impact it had on me. At the very least, those who cross my path behaving disrespectfully cannot leave me claiming, "Oh, I did not know..."

Oh, you knew. You just chose not to listen when I told you so.