Karla L. Miller (she/her, as she dutifully virtue signals), is a Washington Post columnist who "offers weekly advice on workplace dramas and traumas."
This week's trauma is brought to you by a reader I am going to totally and randomly call "Karen," who wrote to Miller to complain about being told to "calm down."
She begins her letter by establishing that she has absolutely no self-esteem problems:
I am a professional woman at the peak of my career. A big part of my job is solving systemic problems within our company, and I'm good at it.
The new head of our division is a terrific guy in many ways. He is trying hard to commit to diversity. He says and does many of the right things and is intolerant of bad behavior, which is great.
There's just one little problem:
On the other hand, he is a straight White man in his early 50s, and he still misses the mark on some matters.
That's not just three strikes, that's four.
- His sexual preference.
- His race.
- His sex.
- His age.
We'll get to the details in the moment, but this deserves to be highlighted. Her question to Miller is this:
How can I explain to him that telling a woman to calm down is sexist?
We are being told here that using a common phrase meant to suggest you are overreacting to a situation is sexist, but asserting that your boss's immutable characteristics (including his sex) is the reason he "misses the mark on some matters" is not sexist.
You will be shocked to learn that Miller does not point this out. I doubt it ever occurs to her.
Let's take a look at Karen's case in some detail:
The one bugging me now is that any time I express frustration, he'll tell me to "calm down."
This strongly suggests that she expresses frustration a lot. Like, a lot a lot.
Maybe, I don't know, she needs to calm down?
Nah, he's just a sexist:
Mind you, I am not shouting or crying or anything dramatic, just expressing my legitimate feelings about a problem I am tasked with solving.
She is just expressing her legitimate feelings.
And yes, by going to her boss, she did "go see the manager."
I'll address this again in a moment, but it has nothing to do with shouting and crying. That's something a person "at the peak" of her career should know by now.
A recent example...
(Boy, she really does do this a lot.)
...was someone in another department holding up my biggest project, claiming a lack of information despite receiving regular updates from my team. When I expressed frustration in an email about this person's inattention causing unnecessary delays, he replied, "Calm down."
I've always had candid relationships with previous bosses (none of them straight White men), where we could share our thoughts and feelings.
How many times does a person have to engage in explicit sexist and racist behavior for someone to notice?
And really, what does being straight have to do with anything? It's like a tic with her.
I feel he lacks understanding and empathy...
(Of course he does, because man.)
...and he wouldn't say this to a man.
News flash: I have been told to calm down by male bosses. I have been told to calm down by female bosses. At no point in time was I screaming or crying; rather, they believed I was overreacting to, or misinterpreting, a situation.
That's a very normal thing that happens.
It's not all about you, professional woman at the peak of your career.
How can I explain to him that telling a woman to calm down is sexist?
This is a problem, exacerbated by the fact that it isn't.
Columnist Karla Miller's first response is to totally agree with the premise of Karen's letter.
After all, her boss is an old straight white male, so he's probably a Republican and we're supposed to believe all women who accuse Republicans of... anything.
She then brings "privilege" into the discussion, which I believe is a requirement in The Washington Post style guide.
People at the lower end of the privilege scale, especially in service or care-taking jobs, are accustomed to absorbing, validating and filtering other people's emotional spillover to identify and solve underlying problems. But someone like your boss probably lacks that experience in a professional context, so any degree of emotional context, however mild, overwhelms his ability to analyze the problem.
Her boss is basically an emotional cripple based on reasons.
Believe it, hater.
He might characterize it as just being logic-driven — but how often have you seen Mr. Spock snap, "oh, calm down" at Dr. McCoy?
It's tricky to call out an ally for problematic behaviors, especially unconscious habits. Even if you're careful to make clear that it's the behavior you're labeling as sexist, not the person, you'll likely trigger some defensiveness.
Miller eventually gets around to offering some decent advice, providing various approaches she could use.
Humor: "You realize ‘calm down' is the least calming thing you can say to anyone, right?"
Concern: "I take our team's on-time delivery seriously, and I know you do too. But this other department is not treating our schedule as a priority. How can we remedy that?"
Straight talk: "When you tell me to calm down, it comes across as dismissing my concerns. I would like to be candid with you about problems affecting me and my team."
Here's the thing: Strip all the sexism (and racism, etc.) out of this piece, and you have a legitimate (and common) workplace problem. There is absolutely no reason to introduce sexism and the rest into it. It could be an element, but it doesn't sound like it, not given what Karen laid out, so absent any clear evidence, why make the claim? Why accept the claim with complete credulity? And why add the casual "old straight white man" slur like that's okay now?
It's because our culture tells us that every problem, every slight, and every routine annoyance with your fellow human being (particularly old straight white men), is because we live in a systemically racist, sexist, and evil country that's out to get you.
Maybe Karen's boss has the right idea. Maybe we all need to calm down.
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Thanks to subscriber to @quodscripsi for the hot tip on this article.
