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Advice neededWould-be interviewer is a man in lipstick. What do?
Hey sisters,
I need y'all's wisdom and courage. Please let me know what you would do in my position.
I'm a new mom in IT - primarily tech support and some system administration. I walked away from a well paying role that ate about 90 hours a week, and where I wasn't respected. I'm having a Hell of a time with finding a job that fits into family life.
Most local positions are for MSPs which demand travel and excessively long hours away from home. Can't do it anymore, so I'm looking for a remote role, ideally in cyber security.
I found exactly what I'm looking for ... but the talent acquisition specialist is a man in lipstick with a post on LinkedIn that's basically tantamount to "if you don't use people's true and authentic pronouns you're an oppressor". The email from him included a hyperlink to a calendar with the chance to select a time slot for an interview, and two optional questions: how do you pronounce your name (with the chance to record yourself saying your name and upload the audio) and your preferred pronouns (groan).
I... Don't know. This is a great opportunity for me to break into a side of IT that's hard to get into... but I don't think I can stomach the company culture if they think diversity and inclusion means we call mentally ill men in dresses women.
What do I do? Do I pick an interview time and let the pronoun thing slide? Do I swallow my discomfort for the sake of my career and family? This is hard and I resent being put into this position at all.
Natalie Clifford Barney (1876-1972)! She was an openly lesbian writer, American but living in France. She had a literary salon that hosted all kinds of interesting people that came through, especially women and other lesbians. I'm not doing her justice right now lol really recommend looking her up.
I really need to get to reading Women of the Left Bank. It's been on my "to read" list forever.
If you're interested in Irish history, there's been a good documentary available about lesbians who were involved in Irish independence called Croíthe Radacacha. You can find it here, but you may need to use a VPN to watch it. It's mostly in Irish with English subtitles. It just aired recently and I thought it was really well made.
Thanks for the rec! I only knew about Eva Gore-Booth and Esther Roper - so thrilled to learn there are many more!
There's also a documentary about the Ladies of Llangollen under "More of the same". I'll be sure to check that out as well.
I love everything about the story of Emily Dickinson.
Anything in particular? I have a couple of her poems still memorized from childhood but don't know anything about her as a person.
Anything that has to do with historical methods that lesbians used to signal to each other that they were lesbian is my usual favorite. I’m always learning more stuff.
But my ultimate favorite is how I have managed to well verse myself in the true history of the Stonewall riots. The male washing of that history sickens me, so every Pride month, I’m as most vocal as I possibly can be about it within reason. (Which probably was another reason my disgusting colleagues had wanted to get me fired before June hit. Myself celebrating or even MENTIONING Pride month probably would have set their evil little hairs on fire).
I love history, but I don't know any lesbian history, so I'll keep checking for comments.
Absolutely. I consider history the most important subject and it's a shame that younger generations nowadays seem to know or even care very little about what happened in the past.
I second the recommendation on Lillian Faderman. Haven't read Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers yet (lesbian history became more depressing as the 20th century progressed due to the spread of sexology), but Faderman's To Believe in Women: What Lesbians Have Done for America - A History is one of my all-time favorite books. Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendship and Love between Women from the Renaissance to the Present covers a broader range of history but is also very interesting. And if anyone here has seen S2 of Gentleman Jack, you might recall Anne Lister mentioning a case involving two schoolmistresses in Scotland (though it's impossible to know the exact nature of their relationship). Faderman wrote about the case in Scotch Verdict: The Real-Life Story That Inspired The Children's Hour, which offers fascinating insight into how lesbianism was regarded in early 19th-century Scotland and Britain (or rather, how men in positions of power bent over backwards to pretend lesbianism couldn't exist between "respectable" Christian women).
Too many things to add to my reading list!