I cried on Wednesday

I am generally not a crier. I sometimes get rage/frustration tears, but I don’t often get afflicted with “the feels.” I certainly did not cry after Al Gore lost in 2000, and I am pretty sure I wouldn’t have cried if Mitt Romney had won in 2012. But I cried hard on Wednesday.

I am in the middle of ultra-liberal Seattle, so I was surrounded by other mourners as well. We protested; we shared blog posts of why we shouldn’t fret; we consoled each other that Hillary won the popular vote. And yet, I sit wondering why I am so emotionally stirred — 4 days after my beloved countrymen elected a demagogue into the highest office.

Here’s what I’ve come up with so far:

1. Normalizing hateful behavior — We have now told the world and our children that it’s ok to behave abhorrently.

• I’m seeing a rash of emails from CEOs to their employees reminding them that the racism, xenophobia, sexism, and hate speech will not be tolerated in their companies. Kudos to them for standing up for decency, but why do they even have to say it? It’s because this election cycle has normalized the hate speech that we’ve worked for decades to eradicate from day-to-day life.
• My own CEO sent a blog post about why things are going to turn out ok, and several employees wrote responses about how much better and reassured they felt after reading it. I didn’t feel reassured at all. Sure, America is going to survive, but what’s coming out the other side of the ashes? A whiter, less tolerant place to be. It’s easy for the white, straight men and women of America to say that it will be fine because it will be for them. And frankly, it will be fine for me as well — a whitewashed Asian female. But I remember the days in Texas when I would walk into a convenience store and get glares. Glares at my brown skin and my slitty eyes. For being an “Other.” Until you have been the recipient of pure disgust from someone who doesn’t even know you, you cannot tell others that it’ll be ok — because it might not be for them.
• I fear for my friends whose newly-found acceptance is at risk. I fear that everyday life is going to be a little less safe, a little scarier and certainly less welcoming for Muslims, LGBTQ, Hispanics, and more. And if you’re not currently in those groups of people, it may be a matter of time before your shade of brown is called out for not being quite white enough.

2. Gender Bias — I have written about gender bias before, and it came out in full force after Tuesday. Hillary’s loss of the election to a completely unqualified buffoon of a man was a huge slap in the face for any woman who has experienced gender bias. And please, no more comments about how she rode on Bill’s coattails to get where she is today.

Seeing these statements reminded me of all of the episodes of gender bias that I had encountered in my career that will feel so familiar to so many of you:

• The time I was told that women didn’t *really* want to be leaders
• The times I was told that my elbows were too sharp and that I was too decisive
• The times it was implied that my success was only due to my husband
• The times when there was a double standard for a promotion
• The time that I was at an industry conference (just a few months ago!) and was told that women can’t be good engineers because our brains aren’t cut out for it.

I really was prepared for the highest glass ceiling to be shattered on Tuesday night. Sure, Hillary isn’t perfect. But if you truly believe that gender bias did not play a role in Tuesday’s result, you are sadly mistaken.

So I cried on Wednesday because of normalization of hateful behavior and gender bias. Now that the tears have dried, where do we go from here? Let’s call out hateful behaviors when we see them and not allow them to be normalized. Let’s focus on 2018 elections. Let’s volunteer locally. Let’s be better than all of this.