fearless women: maybe they should be feared

A friend told me a short story about herself that I was happy to hear. She told the chair of one of Berkeley's puppet commissions* related to real estate development that she was fearless. This particular commission had decided, with no notice to the public, no notice to at least one of it's members but notice to the lobbyist for the proposed development, that the commission would not allow public comment at a public hearing.

My friend kicks ass. She told the chair she was prepare to get arrested that night because she was going to speak. The chair backed down after my friend told him "I am fearless".

I am grateful that fearless women keep entering my life.

I was inspired last week by another friend who has always been sweetly calm, cheerful and private. Yet, as she made comments at another public hearing, for another puppet city commission, she erupted with power. After wards, I complimented her on how powerfully she had spoken and she said "I am angry. I am not going to suppress my anger anynore. I'm angry."

For my whole life, essentially, I have been fearless. I don't edit in the way people pressure me to edit. My experience of cultural pressures for me to tamp down my powerful, fearless self is that people seek to diminish my power by talking about norms, telling me how I am wrong but such persons ignore the substance of what I said. When someone starts telling me I don't abide by cultural norms, I become both angrier and more fearless.

Cultural norms are never universal norms. Take any circle of people and ask them what they consider a norm in a given situation. Many people drift through life unconsciously assuming that what they consider normative is what everyone considers normative. Not. So not true. 

I let go of any attempt to abide by cultural norms when I realized norms are nothing more than a tool to suppress. And, far, far too often, it is men using putative norms to pressure women to tanp down their power.

Fuck that.

Life is a lot more fun when I can collaborate with other fearless women.

Come on in. Fearlessness is wonderful and powerful. It is just right. Like Goldilocks pursued the perfect bed, the perfect bowl of porridge, fearless women do what is 'just right'. "Just right" is whatever they want to do, and often involves speaking truth to power.

Fuck anyone who ever has told me, or ever will try to, that I should conform to nebulous norms. Fuck anyone who will only like and love me if I tamp myself down so much that I am suppressed, depressed, isolated and lost.

I've been hanging with a lot of powerful women lately and I fucking love it.

I have also been hanging with some fearless men. And of course I am biased. It seems to me a whole lot more women are fearless than men. I do know some awesome men who will also speak truth to power fearlessly.