I've been kicking myself for some time for, in my efforts to get rid of clutter in my various moves, throwing out the book "In the Company of Women," by Patricia Heim and Susan Murphy. At some point I should probably pick up another copy of it, because I think that it might be helpful for certain things I might want to address in this blog, and the family gender issue is one such topic. I'll try to address some of the relevant issues without the aid of that book.
Research has demonstrated certain typical (and by "typical" I am referring most specifically to White-Anglo-Saxon-Protestant middle class U.S. perspective here) ways of male and female interaction. For example, men generally don't like to reveal their "weaknesses", which women do in such ways as asking too many questions (rather than just figuring things out by themselves), discrediting themselves through disclaimers (Excuse me, but don't you think that we could maybe do it this way, perhaps?), or revealing how they feel (e.g., terrified before their first committee presentation).
I'm saying this to show that what I am doing in this blog is more typically woman-like than man-like, in as much as I'm going public and in great detail regarding some things in my life that might generally be viewed as failure experiences, which would be antonymic to their generally competitive way of doing things. (Although this doesn't, of course, explain why women might not have expressed the kind of concerns that I have about the Vienna mission.) However, that being said, it is unfair to so universally stereotype men; there most certainly are plenty of exceptions out there... somewhere.
So there are at least a couple pertinent "take-aways" from this discussion and one is that reactions to my writing here may well fall along gendered lines. For example, males might think of it as a bunch of emotional mumbo-jumbo or they might use it to boost their personal status (by means of taking advantage of perceived weaknesses exposed in writing here), or some other male type response.
In contrast (and here I could really use In the Company of Women) women might pick up on the juiciness of talk about people - gossip, in other words. Or they could ignore me as being relationally of no consequence to them.
So some of the content in this blog has gender issues, but there are also gender issues as to how different readers might respond to the content of this blog.
Although this discussion has much broader implications, the reason why I brought it up here and now is that I'm a bit apprehensive regarding how family members might respond to things I say here, especially family-related comments, and I expect that the responses will most fall along typical gendered lines. Is this all hyperbole? The proof is in the pudding, as we say, so it'll be interesting to see (if my writing here ever reaches my family) what the responses are.
Meanwhile, suffice it to say that I feel I'm taking more of a risk in this discussion about family in bringing up what I see as its positive strengths. I could be digging my own grave in which all the potentially negative assertions will be laid to rest along with my body, sort of like arguing the case of the "enemy" if you will. Imagine going into a long diatribe against Hitler and then ending with some token thoughts about positive aspects of his personality and accomplishments (maybe sometime in his childhood he rescued a baby bird, for example). You can imagine that Hitler and his Wehrmacht might take those positive images and run wild with them. Of course, using Hitler is way out of line vis a vis my family, but I just use that illustration as an extreme example to help you understand what I mean.
That being said, however, I think my I feel more certain about what family member responses might be than what, for example, Vienna mission leadership might be to comments in this blog.
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And while we're on the subject of comparisons, I should mention that it's rather unfair to discuss my family and my experiences with the Vienna mission side by side in the same posts. I'm referring to my conviction that any apparent coexistence reflects undue negativity on my family that they don't deserve. Whatever faults the family might have pale in comparison to the machinations of the Vienna apparatus. Also, I find it much easier to come up with positive aspects of my family than I do of the Vienna mission. Please keep this in mind as you read along.
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Before I move on to the text, I want to mention a lighter subject: I seem to have found a chicken that appears to be a direct descendant of those used in Aeroflot planes in years gone by. Or maybe my chicken was raised in the same way as those served on Aeroflot. Maybe some KGB agent decided that our food supply could be sabotaged by introducing these kinds of chicken into the American market. Think of it, perhaps, as an underhanded way of saying thanks for all the frozen American chicken so abundant in Russia in the 1990s. But since death by chicken (except, possibly, in the event of gagging/choking on it) is highly unlikely and I'm not aware of any compromise of the nutritious value of my Aeroflot-like chicken, I'll assume that it's just a case of misguided product selection by the grocery store where I bought it. Still, it does bring back unfortunate memories of Aeroflot chickens. I'm now promising myself never to buy meat at that grocery store again, even if their cheap bananas otherwise draw me there. But I'm eating it nonetheless because it's ingrained in me not to waste anything. I will take partial credit for the final condition of the chicken, though, because, in all fairness to the chicken, it probably would have been not bad if properly boiled for approximately 10 hours.
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This next sub-sub-section is titled: "What newcomers need."
"In order to assess the special needs of newcomers during sense making, we compare their situation in general with that of insiders. The experiences of newcomers differ in three important ways from those of insiders. First, insiders normally know what to expect in and of the situation... Second, when surprises do arise (e.g., not getting an expected raise), the insider has sufficient history in the setting to interpret them more accurately or to make sense based on relevant knowledge of the immediate situation... Third, when surprises arise and sense making is necessary, the insider usually has other insiders with whom to compare perceptions and interpretations." (p. 242)
So basically, the insider has developed a basic understanding or theory of how the organization operates, has a history of experiences and observations about the organization, and also has relations with others in the organization, and all of these can be and are used to know how to best function in the organization. Newcomers don't have any of this. And in the next paragraph the author states that newcomers don't have the organization-specific framework for understanding what's going on around him in the organization, but s/he also is not aware of this lack (of framework).
In applying this to my Vienna experience, I would say that I really thought I understood the mission a whole lot better than it turned out I did. I was aware of this and I was also aware that I didn't have the right framework, so in my case I didn't fit the author's description. Maybe I understood my lack (once I was actually in Vienna and on the job) because of my background and experience (which was enough to serve as an alternate reference, but not enough to give me a more accurate prior understanding of the mission).
The author goes on to describe how newcomers might try to use mental frameworks from earlier experiences, applying them to the new context, and how this process can be problematic. Then he shows how it becomes so important for newcomers to have insiders (informants? - a qualitative research term) to help in sense-making.
In my case, I didn't have any such insiders, and those apparently set up as mentors or "references" were the closest thing I would have had. Sometimes, especially in informal interactions with others in the mission, this or that helpful information would be shared that might have helped me in making sense. I think there was probably a time in my tenure with the mission that people accepted me as an insider, although the mission leadership and those working closest to me still weren't so sure.
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That's it for this text, so I'll pick another one for next time.
