Posted on 07/01/2002 9:39:33 PM PDT by BiffSchneider
Please parody the following article from http://losangeles.craigslist.org/w4m/4490297.html. The best parody will win a pound of tofu and a poster of Phil Donahue.
An open Letter to the Tall White Guys:
You work with me nearly everyday. But to say that you know me would be incorrect. I’m the woman who ultimately stands between you and your dreams of how the world should really be. And I want you to know that I’m on to you. I’m the professional woman in the next office, the secretary down the hall, the girl who cleans your home, the peer who sits next to you at the board meetings. I’m the one who stands beside you in the campus cafeteria, who counsels students, or patients, or home buyers, or social work clients. We work together but separately because you are too consumed by your own privilege to notice who I am, in my heart.
Yes, I can sense your delight when I’m being charming, as I’ve been taught to be in front of men. But your amusement is tinged with suspicion and trepidation. Your smile is tight-lipped, your body tense, even as you chuckle at my unpredictable sense of humor. In private, you seem to appreciate the keen observations I make about our business, but you often stare wide-eyed at me when I’m speaking, as if you’d never heard a woman think out loud before in a linear fashion.
We are friends, in a way, but we can never expand that peer-to-peer connection beyond a razor-thin collegial façade. Because when you get together with the other TWGs – tall white guys who used to rule the world – your suspicions of me come flooding forth in a torrent of misplaced boyhood fears. You’ll be quick to protest that the TWG concept is just another stereotype, but you are wrong. Unfortunately, I have the scars to prove it.
The TWGs talk down to me or over me or through me, or around me, and you follow suit. They roll their eyes or rudely sigh aloud if I deign to contradict them, no matter how gently, and you sit silently staring at the floor. They even claim my ideas as their own, interrupt my comments, tune out when I’m not on their precise wavelength, snicker at the observations I make. And that’s not all.
Together, you and all the other TWGs shut me out of key decisions, attempting to nullify my authority. You send conspiratorial emails to each other about issues that directly impact my job, planning your next moves in a game that I am too busy working to take notice of. You gather for secret lunches, buttonhole each other on the sidewalk, in the men’s room, the gym, the athletic club dining room. You whisper and stare, or you talk loudly and back-slap, congratulating each other on the dubious achievement of avoiding open and honest communication.
I’ve been to business or medical or law school just like you, and I’ve got credentials that are as good as the ones your frequently tout. What I don’t have is a raging ego, a killer instinct, or a penis. I mention the latter because you don’t have to study Freud to recognize the importance of size in your world. It shows in the way you crowd shorter men to emphasize your height. It comes out in that gee-I-pity-her look you throw toward women who are overweight or don’t otherwise fit your imperial standards of beauty. And in the curious way you deal with men of color, or, who may dress like you but somehow aren’t cut from the same cloth. They seem to threaten you in ways that surpass understanding, ways that I find amusing.
Not that you have to be a tall or white or even a guy to be a TWG. They actually come in all sizes and colors and both genders. The short ones, the ones of color and the women who emulate you are three times as obnoxious. They know they’ve got to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that they belong in the worlds of TWGs despite their obvious deficiencies, and they work hard at being they kind of double-talking backstabbers of whom you can be proud.
You’re probably feeling a sudden craving for the sports page right about now. But before you turn away, I just want to ask if you treat your mother, your wife or, God forbid, your daughter this way? Do you dismiss them with a wave of your TWG hand? Do you teach them to be charming, to smile pleasantly, while protecting your professional or social interests? Do you talk endlessly and incessantly about your plans, your problems and your dreams while ignoring theirs? In short, are you a royal pain in the butt at home as well as at work? And how does it feel to know that this is what your wife and your daughter face every day from someone who looks a lot like you?
We all know you are blissfully unaware of what you’re doing. That’s part of your prerogative: to not notice the disastrous impact you can have on others, to see only what you want to see, to marginalize the rest of the world. Perhaps you learned this from your father, the TWG who taught you all that you know and who treated your sister with studied indifference. Whatever. We grow weary of your arrogance.
We want you to know that the world you survey from on high is changing faster than your failing eyesight can detect. Do you spy that small but growing band of unappreciated and mistreated women on the horizon? We are the people who really run the world, who do the work that makes life worth living. Soon, very soon, we will be marching your way, bringing our intuition and our anger along with our compassion to a boardroom, a clinic, a classroom, a hospital or an all-staff retreat near you. And, when we finally arrive, it’s safe to say that based on the way we’ve been treated, we’ll be taking very few TWGs as prisoners.
If she can't even get that right, how are we supposed to believe any of that screed?
She's definitely lying about the ego and killer instinct. BTW, this 6 feet tall white guy went to engineering school and lives alone, so I can be a royal pain in the butt there if I want to be.
You’re probably feeling a sudden craving for the sports page right about now.
Not particularly. A barf bag seems appropriate, though.
Around that time, the Powers that Be were still trying to foster resentment between the sexes, as they still try to foster resentment between races and such. I think they have given up somewhat on the sex thing because human nature just doesn't work that way, as men and women need each other for the species to continue.
Just to be clear, I do not volunteer to find out. Find someone else to go first.
You’re probably feeling a sudden craving for the sports page right about now.
Not particularly. A barf bag seems appropriate, though.
Well, I had been thinking about reading some International Journal of Hydrogen Energy, but I have to agree that a barf bag seems better suited right now.
I suppose this means she'll kill them.That I'd like to see.All she'll need is the government to help her out,just like it forced someone to hire her and give her an education.Tall white guys?So being tall is now a crime along with being white and male?
But before you turn away, I just want to ask if you treat your mother, your wife or, God(?) forbid, your daughter this way?
And does she talk to her father,brother or(God forbid) nephew this way?
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