This week

Doctor In The Air

Plus…

Maria’s Midweek Mindfulness 

and

the Wednesday Whisper

Miss the point

So, a female academic took an air steward to task for calling her Miss when her boarding pass clearly said Dr.

Deciding to make the issue public she sent out a tweet to @quantas and while she received over 8000 likes she also received a barrage of hate mail resulting in Twitter having to filter out some of it.

In response Dr O’Dwyer defended herself explaining that she was highlighting one of a thousand instances of sexism that women encounter every day. “It’s not about the title, it’s about the fact that this wouldn’t have happened if I was a man.”

I have been picking away at this for days.

On the one hand, of course she should have taken him and his employer to task and on the other hand can we ever really deal with things properly at the incident level? And, when we do deal with things at the incident level what is the best way to approach it? It seems that for every bit of support Dr O’Dwyer received she also managed to incite hate in others, is that really going to create the change we are looking for in the world?

Quantas responded with a nice, vanilla, corporate statement: “We are extremely proud of our cabin crew who respectfully serve our customers day in and day out and play a vital safety role,” and “Our crew treat all passengers with the utmost respect regardless of age, gender and occupation.”

Then, I think, well I am blogging about it, so she has provoked something in me. What would I have done?

Of course, I look to the DRM for answers but could I really imagine myself empathising with an air steward while a line of anxious people are trying to board a plane and grab overhead locker space? Nah, I tell myself I would have let that one slide in the basis that I don’t want to spend my life ‘educating’ or ‘correcting’ others on the small stuff when there is no time to enter into a real dialogue.

It comes under the heading of ‘picking my battles’.

Maria’s Midweek Mindfulness

How do I pick my battles? Most importantly I don’t let battles pick me. When I choose to challenge someone or something, I have learned that the first place is to look inside myself and figure out what is really important.

 

The Wednesday Whisper

How do you pick your battles?

 

SAVE THE DATE: 21st NOVEMBER 6pm – INVITATION TO FOLLOW.

 

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