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I’ve done this to several men, and they catch on rather quickly. You’ll be able to have a conversation right then and there, and it works long term too – they might’ve forgot their manners by the time you talk to them again, but by repeating this, they’ll eventually learn to let you talk without you having to do this at the start of every convo. Source: I have a very stubborn older brother, who eventually learned too.
1. When they interrupt you, stop talking. Don’t try to raise your voice or battle them. Be completely quiet and wait.
2. Ignore everything they’re saying. Do not actually listen – just wait until they shut up. Don’t make a point of anything they say, do not answer to anything they say, do not refer to anything they say here. Literally do not listen a single word. Let them rant as long as they want.
3. When they finally shut up and wait for your reaction, say: ”I wasn’t done talking.”
4. Start over whatever you were saying when they interrupted you. I don’t care if it was a 10-minute explanation of rocket science. Start. Over. Repeat you original thought, but do not add anything related to what they just said while talking over you. That gives them the idea that it’s okay to interrupt you, you’ll still listen and pay attention and they’ll get their point clear without having to listen to yours. (It’s especially funny when you get done and they expect you to keep going talking about whatever they talked over you. The face when it sinks in that you didn’t listen a single word is glorious.)
5. If they interrupt you again, return to step 1. If you find yourself repeating the cycle over 3 times, tell them: ”you’re not letting me speak. Either you listen and wait for your turn, or our conversation ends here.” If they try to make excuses, laugh it off or keep interrupting, end the conversation. Prove them that if they wont let you speak, they’re not worth your time.
Why does this work? First, because sometimes talking over is internalized and men don’t actually notice they’re doing it. Being vocally called out makes them realize it and pay attention to it – especially if it happens more than once. Secondly, by refusing to acknowledge anything they say when they interrupt you, they’ll soon realize they will not get their own point across if they keep doing that. People and especially men have the need to be heard and paid attention to when they talk – when you make it clear that by talking over you, they will not have your attention, they’ll learn to wait until you’re done, because they know that’s when you will be paying attention and actually listening.
Go my darlings. Have some actual conversations where your point of view is just as valid as his. Demand the basic respect of being heard. You can actually have some interesting conversations with men when they’re forced to listen too, when being louder is not going to make them feel like they’re dominating the conversation or winning the argument.
A little dark and shameful bit of Canada’s history – (from wikipedia)
“The École Polytechnique massacre, also known as the Montreal massacre, was a mass shooting at the École Polytechnique in Montreal, Quebec, Canada that occurred on December 6, 1989. Twenty-five-year-old Marc Lépine, armed with a rifle and a hunting knife, shot 28 people, killing 14 women, before committing suicide. He began his attack by entering a classroom at the university, where he separated the male and female students. After claiming that he was “fighting feminism” and calling the women “a bunch of feminists,” he shot all nine women in the room, killing six. He then moved through corridors, the cafeteria, and another classroom, specifically targeting women to shoot. Overall, he killed fourteen women and injured ten other women and four men in just under 20 minutes before turning the gun on himself. His suicide note claimed political motives and blamed feminists for ruining his life. The note included a list of 19 Quebec women whom Lépine considered to be feminists and apparently wished to kill. It is the deadliest mass shooting in Canadian history.
Since the attack, Canadians have debated various interpretations of the events, their significance, and Lépine’s motives. Many feminist groups and public officials have characterized the massacre as an anti-feminist attack that is representative of wider societal violence against women. Consequently, the anniversary of the massacre has since been commemorated as the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women.”
Yeah. Dude finally makes his rage fantasies real and murders 14 females. The Wilfred Laurier Centre for Women and Trans People makes the crucial argument – But What About The Men?? – instead of recognizing a day of remembrance for what it is – a day against the sex class based violence against women.
When you see the word ‘intersectional’ these days you can almost assume that the paragraph in question will be loaded with bullshit. Transactivists and the associated ‘queer theory’ is fucking in love with redefining words into senseless, male-pandering flap-a-doodle.
Interesectionality (for the nth time) is the study of how overlapping or intersecting social identities, particularly minority identities, relate to systems and structures of oppression, domination, or discrimination.
Intersectionality for many Transactivists is simple a ‘#WATM?’ transcribed into academic speak in order to cloak the misogyny that underpins the transactivist connotation of the word. And of course, as the post below illustrates this insipid bowdlerization of feminist language servers to erase female history and the class based violence that females experience in our society.
http://auntiewanda.tumblr.com/post/168548589581/shopcatsca-auntiewanda-murmormar
We try to replicate what we see in our society and media. We as a society need to stop portraying women in media as mere eye candy for the male-gaze. Of course, if you happen to be Legolas, the rules do not apply. :)
The dour feminist in me would like to point out that women are still struggling toward full autonomy in society after some 2000 years of ‘civilization’ ( :/ ), but the hot topic of self driving vehicles has crossed my desk and merits a comment or two with regards to society.
A healthy dose of skepticism is always in order when it comes to vaunted new technology promoted by the tech industry. Because they, like other features of capitalist society, value profit over anything else, the tech industry will often jazz up, embellish, and often outright fabricate their claims to make their product seem like the next “must have” consumer item in society (consider the recent crapple failphone X – now with *twice* the screens to break).
Skepticism in place, we do need to realize that sometimes the technological advance is real and will have serious effects in society. Consider the case of the elevator operators in the 1940’s. It was a flourishing job opportunity, and even wielded social power as a 1945 elevator-operator strike in Manhattan severely clogged the engines of business industry. Within a generation this profession was gone; automatic elevators had all but replaced human elevator operators and ran elevators more efficiently and cheaply ever since.
A shit deal if you happened to train for and be a Elevator Operator – with the phrase “this is progress looks like burning in your ears” you had to go out a get a different job, and most likely one that did not pay as well as being an Elevator Operator.
Fast forward to the present day – Truckers are now facing this very same conundrum as automated vehicles are entering their field of work. Operating truck driving software and actually driving a truck are two very distinct categories; thus yet another blue collar job opportunity might very well be shut off to the people. I’m not a Luddite when it comes to new technology in society, but the motivation behind the vehicles (and most of capitalism to be honest) has me worried. “In Canada 1 in every 100 workers is a truck driver, some 300,000 people – it’s the second most common occupation reported by men.” (The Walrus – Overhauled by Sharon J. Riley).
Are we going to spend the money to retrain these people if the technology for self-driving vehicles actually becomes a standard? Or do we just turn these people to the wind, like the Elevator Operators of the 40’s, “here’s your last paycheck, sorry about your luck , bu-bye now.”? I highly doubt that the trucking industry – the prime mover in its quest for ‘automated-efficiency’- is going to step up to the plate and sponsor job retraining for all the employees that have become redundant. The responsibility for integrating these now jobless people back into the economic workforce will most likely fall to the government and as valiant as Canadian social services are, a three hundred thousand plus hit on our limited social resources just won’t end well.
So, the case looks like this – Business moves ‘forward’ creating more efficiency and profitability, while the social and economic damage caused by said advances is left to the government to haphazardly repair with the limited resources available to it. This smells like a looming case of what in corporate culture is known as “externalities” or items that have a tangible economic or social cost but importantly not directly to the company itself (Pollution is a prime example of an ‘externality’). So really, it will be the common citizen, who will be responsible for keeping society going while business plunges ahead willy-nilly chasing the most effective and profitable supply chain.
I have a problem with these technology driven calamitous ‘externalities’ that we will be facing, not just in the transportation sector but in other sectors as well. This process is driven by greed, and greed gives no fucks for those who must perish in the process of efficiency maximization. The argument against me would be such – but with greater efficiency and optimization more people will be better served by the industry at hand, thus society will be better and everyone wins.
It’s just that everyone doesn’t win. The people put out of work by technological advances and their families are going to lose and lose big because they will have no income to afford the goods being delivered so efficiently and profitably to the stores. Our profit driven corporate/business sectors almost always seems to ignore that fact that their profitability hinges on condition that people exist in the market that have the capacity to buy their widgets. You may have the best widgets out there, but with no demand, nothing happens. Of course you can keep profits going up through dubious accounting methods and the churn and burn of the stockmarket magic – but that is an illusion as you are just moving money around an not creating actual value in society; plus that financial shell game periodically crashes hurting everyone in society (see 1929, 2008 et cetra).
The way forward is clear, at least to me. Technological advancement needs to examined and fined tuned through the lens of what society as a whole needs, and not just the business sector because the business sector is necessary too short sighted to see beyond the bottom line and what is good for them at the time.
Related reading and some of my paraphrase fodder – Overhauled – By Sharon J. Riley found in the Walrus Magazine December 2017.
Howard Zinn was an active and vocal opponent of the Vietnam War. He brings insight, like Noam Chomsky, to the issues that our liberal societies won’t acknowledge. The diffusion of Personal responsibility – and no, not the ‘personal responsibility’ (bootstraps!?!!!!) wielded by the corporatist right to bludgeon the poor, but actual personal responsibility is what is being discussed in the quote. It happens all to often when it comes to how we react to the actions taken in our stead by our government.
“I didn’t vote for them,” or “I’m just doing my job…” or <insert excuse here> does not make you any less responsible for the actions committed in your name.
“The fact that there is only an indirect connection between Dow recruiting students and napalm dropped on Vietnamese villages, does not vitiate the moral issue. It is precisely the nature of modern mass murder that it is not visibly direct like individual murder, but takes on a corporate character, where every participant has limited liability. The total effect, however, is a thousand times more pernicious, than that of the individual entrepreneur of violence. If the world is destroyed, it will be a white-collar crime, done in a business-like way, by large numbers of individuals involved in a chain of actions, each one having a touch of innocence.”
-Howard Zinn. On War (second edition). p. 64.
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