This was a bad week for men who just won't shut up

By Aminatou Sow June 16 at 5:28 PM

< Aminatou Sow is a writer and co-founder of Tech LadyMafia. She co-hosts the podcast “Call Your Girlfriend.” >

We’re inundated with ridiculous stereotypes about women: “When both husband and wife wear pants, it is not difficult to tell them apart — he is the one who is listening.” “When there are women and geese, there’s noise.” “Women use 20,000 words per day while men use 7,000.”

We get it. Women talk too damn much. But men? Men are patient and stoic listeners. Strong, silent, brooding types. All of them. Any woman who has regular interactions with a man will tell you how viscerally untrue and laughable is the assertion that we talk more than they do.

Events of the past week have made this all too clear. Take, for example, the thrilling performance from Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.), who — before her interruption — used her skills as a former prosecutor to expertly set traps for Attorney General Jeff Sessions and demand hard answers at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing Tuesday. The optics of her older, very white, male colleagues shutting her down, however, were not great — quite maddening, actually.

Surely these giants in the Senate were not threatened by a woman simply asking questions? She didn’t take up more time than anyone else, but she was accused of not being “courteous” enough and admonished to be nicer. This power dynamic is one that is very familiar to many women of color.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/this-was-a-bad-week-for-men-who-just-wont-shut-up/2017/06/16/c8eef3aa-51e7-11e7-b064-828ba60fbb98_story.html?tid=pm_opinions_pop&utm_term=.8cad66490a9c