More like pushed aside
Behold the Female Motivational Speakers Agency:
The Female Motivational Speakers Agency is a booking bureau dedicated to inspiring businesswomen, female athletes and equality advocates across the globe.
Established in 2003 and based in London, we are part of a larger agency launched in the early 2000s. Such relevancy combined with decades of professional experience makes our team the best in the business. Our booking agents have years of experience working with some of the biggest brands and female speakers on the circuit, ensuring your event is in safe hands.
It has a treat for us: ten quotes to “empower women” in prepraration for International Women’s Day 2022, all from clients of the agency.
Here’s Joanne Lockwood’s empowering wisdom:
“Diversity is good for business, but it is also the primary factor of being good for people.”
Awesome.
Katie Neeves:
“Nature doesn’t do black and white; it is a whole spectrum – so is sex and gender.”
So empowering.
Kellie Maloney:
“We all want to be included in the human race – that’s the most important thing…”
Empowerful.
All three of these empowering women are men. “Ten quotes to empower women,” three of which are from men who call themselves women. Somehow I don’t feel all that empowered.
But it could be even worse. Just imagine — all ten quotes could be from men! Maybe next year.
Judging from those quotes, I’m willing to bet that the motivational topic those motivational speakers are going to talk about in a motivational way is: themselves as Trans.. Their struggle being trans in secret; their struggle coming out trans; the bigotry directed at trans; the empowerment trans people feel being their authentic self; why this is somehow relatable to and good for women and business. That’s it. Not finances, not strategies, not practical advice. Another inspiring narrative designed to motivate its hearers towards TWAW.
Again this reminds me of my Cluster B ex. At one point during her months of “Keep me, you don’t realize how interesting and wonderful I actually am!” shenanigans, she said: “You think I never do anything. You don’t know that I did a spoken word monologue a few years ago in a theater, as part of a whole program!”
ME: Oh, what was it about?
SHE: About life with mentall illness.
ME: I see. What were the other participants’ monologues about?
SHE: Also about life with mental illness. That’s what the whole program was.
And I thought: Yup, this is what your whole life is about. I have plenty of friends that suffer from, say, depression, and I often suffer from it myself (more mildly), but our lives are about, say, our careers, or our research, or art that we produce, or cooking, or whatever. Your life is about you and how miserable you are. BORING.
GW, I see nothing wrong with programs like monologues about mental illness, and think they are good to help people understand. However, if that is the only thing anyone is ever on about, I can see it would be very trying. I have participated in programs about mental illness, and a number of my plays and books contain that theme; but it is not the only theme I deal with, not the only thing I do, and not the main story in the books, usually just a sort of sub-story.
Yeah, it sounds awful how you describe it, but I can’t bring myself to see anything wrong with a program of monologues about mental illness.
Hm … just saw someone claim that one of the TIMs “ has a history of violence against women, having strangled his ex-wife.” Really?
If so, it’s been forgiven.
Iknklast, I never said that there was anything wrong with such a program, just that if that’s your only claim to being interesting, you’re grasping at straws.
What I find most notable about those three quotes is that they are all self-serving in that they are about demanding that men be included as women.
GW, I’m on your side there. I don’t claim depression is a way to be interesting at all. I don’t want to hear about nothing but someone else’s depression (though I can be empathetic when they need it), and I assume they don’t want to hear about nothing but mine. But there are some depressives who are like trans – it’s all about them, all the time, and you must be looking at them always.
Sastra @ 5 – Yes, Kellie Maloney. He was a boxing promoter before he decided to say he’s a woman.