Lean In and Pseudo-Feminist Icons

In February 2015 talk show personality Jon Stewart announced his eventual exit from Comedy Central’s Daily Show. After the initial wave of pre-emptive nostalgia, the media quickly shifted its attention to who would take Stewart’s place. Online there was a groundswell in favor of one woman: Jessica Williams.

Williams was, in the eyes of many bloggers, fans, and pundits, the ideal pick. She regularly delivered some of the strongest zingers on the Daily Show. She had made repeated appearances on Lena Dunham’s hit show, Girls. Being a black woman, she was poised to contradict the white man’s domination of talk shows today.

A petition emerged on Change.org to make her the next host, which garnered over 10,000 signatures in two days.  It was beginning to seem that execs at Comedy Central would be hard-pressed to deny her the position.

Then something strange happened. Williams took to Twitter and stated outright that she did not want the position, that there were many others more qualified. The online response was to basically give her a pep talk. She just needed to believe in her abilities more.

Before taking an ongoing hiatus from Twitter, she told people to lean the fuck away from her going on to say, “I am a black woman and I am a feminist and I am so many things. I am truly honored that people love my work. But I am not yours.” 

A 2010-2013 Recap: the Rise of Sheryl Sandberg

Jessica Williams’ comment was not introducing a new concept to the public, the basic tenets of “Leaning In” were foregrounded five years ago with the work of Sheryl Sandberg. Chief-Operating Officer at Facebook, Sandberg’s networth clocks in at over a billion dollars. She graduated from Harvard College in 1991. Upon graduation she began her rise in the private sector, with a continued interest on the state of women in the workforce.

Her traction with mainstream feminist discourse can be credited by a number of things, the most obvious being her business-savvy. When we consider the list of Fortune 500 CEOs, and remember that there are more Fortune 500 CEOs with the name John than female CEOS, Sandberg’s words carry more weight. What does she have to say about the clearly pervasive patriarchy in the context of the topmost tiers of the private sector?

Before writing her 2013 bestseller, Sandberg gave a TED Talk (which garnered over 5.4 million views) followed up with a commencement address at Barnard College. Both followed the same rhetorical patterns as her book, in a more condensed form.

With the release of her book came increased public discourse around the state of women in the workplace. The gender imbalance in corporate leadership, the wage gap, and the ways women can combat these systemic inequalities. Lean In found its footing in audiences disturbed by these inequalities and looking for implementable solutions in their daily lives. Her offering was a helpful one, because it was not the practice of movement-building or a feminist revolution. Things could get a lot better if women simply kindled the will to lead and asserted themselves more.

Kiss with a Fist: Sandberg’s Pseudo-Feminism

The problem with Sandberg’s school of thought is that there’s a thread of truth in it. Women do need to be encouraged to assert themselves, to take up space. It’s when the leaning in becomes the focus of the conversation that it becomes an issue. New wave feminism or any move towards female empowerment gets twisted when it gravitates around the “you just need to speak up more.” It swerves to a dangerous place where women are held responsible for their substandard position in society. It confronts the symptom rather than the cause. Resolving the fact that women are socialized to be passive, occupy less leadership positions, it doesn’t start with a well-worded peptalk to those women already conditioned by patriarchy. It starts with breaking the system’s legs, until patriarchy cannot walk or crawl into the minds of the next generation of little girls.

And let me also say, there are many women out there, myself included, who have 99 problems and being a bitch is one.  That is to say that passivity has not been the brunt of my struggle. Resistance to assertive women, women who do not preemptively apologize, has been a problem for me. What that I cannot easily resolve by adapting my outward presentation.

Are there ways in which I reach for the nice, lady-like phrasing of an idea? Are there times when I speak less than the men in the room? Yes, and yes this is laced with the workings of patriarchy. But I, and most women in the workforce today, are not the problem. Even if we were to all eradicate the socialized tendencies towards femininity, even if we were to all to unilaterally, unconditionally lean in, would the country be ready? Would the workforce drop its preference for the tall, decisive, white man?

What’s more, by framing the discussion around leaning in, that we all just need to lean in, it quiets the women who, for centuries, have been doing just that. This isn’t to say Sandberg denies the existence of these women, it’s more that she unintentionally diminishes them. By so quickly taking the focus away from these women, past and present who are pushing hard and getting nowhere.

Interrogating the Sound Byte

There is a certain extent to which Sandberg’s popularity can also be credited to the media, to what the audience is ready for. Because when her message is boiled down to a two-sentence sound byte, or the cover of her book is mixed in with a news segment, it’s all very disarming. Her book is not titled “fuck this system, I’m getting mine” or “Surviving the Patriarchy and Tricking Men into Listening”, it’s just her smug smiling face and that strategic title. When men discuss this new wave feminist thought, it is comfortably distanced from their role in patriarchy.

The reductionist perspective on Sandberg’s book is also aligned with patriarchy. Because regardless of how much I may disagree with her school of thought, there is no getting around the fact that Lean In is a book, not devoid of truth and even some statistics. It is also not entirely patriarchy-blind. More like we put on beer goggles, looked at sexism in the workplace, and described the problem. I kid. Sort of.

And while we can look at the ways in which Sandberg’s message has been reconstructed, simplified, and manufactured, there is the obvious and important fact that she is an active participant in these appropriations. In her 2010 Ted Talk, she defined her own message, not in 240 pages of text, but in a 10 minute speech. The simplified, self-constructed message, was what the media had framed her as saying all along. The problem is that women just aren’t confident enough.

A Lesson in Movement Building

One of the more apt points made by Sandberg is regarding how the feminist movement is losing momentum. In her words “It is time for us to face the fact that our revolution has stalled.”

What she disregards, is how her work has become complicit in the pause on the movement. If we were to look at women’s position in society and say, “you know, have you tried leaning in? Just speak up more. Negotiate your contract. Ask for more”, there would be no need for a movement. The problem is the docility of women, after all.

And let’s say, this is where the toxic, sound-byte Sandberg becomes more relevant. I do not anticipate that Sheryl Sandberg genuinely believes that leaning in will resolve the broader struggle against patriarchy. But that does not detract from the fact that that is exactly what the media has been telling me. Mainstream media allowed Sandberg’s work to exist in a vacuum, one of the eminent voices in the feminist movement today. Her voice has become the microphone for a movement, a voice, that when distorted and given undue attention, essentially denies the need for a movement.  

Although some critics emerged in 2013 to explore Lean In more, we can probably start and stop with the analysis of bell hooks. While I have made many points aligned with Dr.hooks’ assessment, there is one place where our understandings of Sheryl Sandberg depart. In her article "Dig Deep," Dr.hooks states:

“Even though many advocates of feminist politics are angered by Sandberg’s message, the truth is that alone, individually she was no threat to feminist movement. Had the conservative white male dominated world of mass media and advertising not chosen to hype her image, this influential woman would not be known to most folks. It is this patriarchal male dominated re-framing of feminism, which uses the body and personal success of Sheryl Sandberg, that is most disturbing and yes threatening to the future of visionary feminist movement.” 

While the re-framing of feminist thought is certainly the most toxic, hooks' also makes a pointed rejection of Sandberg's obvious influence. Here, I believe we understate the value of allies such as Sandberg. A billionaire corporate exec who wants to be on her feminist game promoting feminist values? If the movement is to live and gain traction within the system, within our capitalist economy that disproportionately values the voice of the rich and affluent, we are missing an opportunity to radicalize Sandberg, to embrace the access to mainstream politic that she wields. We should not dismiss the potential power one widely recognized figure can offer in propelling a movement forward, and certainly not an executive that is credited with the increased profitability and popularity of the most expansive social network to date. If Sandberg's access and capital were introduced without making her a point of focus, we may be stronger for it.

Where the Angry Feminists At? New Leaders Plz.
  

There is another, even more important need in new-wave feminism that Sheryl Sandberg misses. And that’s being fucking angry. Not frustrated, not disappointed in a world that has a deficit of female leaders. But genuinely, hell-raising, movement-building, wheels spinning, all kinds of angry. The kind of emotional feminist leader that is respectability-bucking. The fire of new-wave feminism will not be kindled by soft-portraits of affluent women telling us to look inward to resolve the world’s ills.

In a 2014 panel Gloria Steinem was asked to name the biggest mistake of first-wave feminism. Her words answer Sheryl Sandberg’s statement about a stalled movement. “We were much too nice.”

As much as the basic tenets of Lean In frustrate me, it is not Sandberg we need to spend so much time discussing. It is why she has been the point of focus, why the white supremacist capitalist patriarchy presents her as a feminist vanguard when she is not. Why her message has reached as far, compared to deeper, more reflective feminist contemporaries of our time. We must not only give feminist contemporaries permission to be publicly angry and active, we must actively ask for it. We must ask for a leaders who confront not just the symptoms of patriarchy, but the causes. And when the white-male dominated media delivers an excessively palatable, watered down leader, we must be critical.