A Call to Arms

"If you focus on doing what you love, you'll go far without fatigue..."

- Rachelle Weisel

Unlike dear Rachelle, I am not a good salesperson or actor and would probably never be. She also is many years my senior and in our little Californian startup business, she does most of the field work meeting people and securing deals personally. She also teaches me Yiddish!

My role in that partnership appears strictly secretarial in nature, but there is one aspect of being a personal secretary that most disregard as being fictional. Secretarial jobs often put employees in well connected positions with ample access to operational data. So theoretically, a secretary with the right training can convert operational knowledge into decisive action. What?! Ninja fantasies, maybe, you say. But wait, I do have ample experience being such a "secretary"!

When the main forces are bogged down by short term setbacks or trouble from malicious clients, the "secretary" can be deployed as a potent crisis management unit to save the day. It's a little homage to the "Fire Brigades" of the Second World War, small, fast moving armored forces that plugged holes in the frontlines and conducted swift counterattacks.

I know, that's not what a secretary does historically, save for those redneck "Secretaries of Aggression" featured in some science fiction Texas-inspired space cowboy stories!

But when your partner is playing the role a one-woman army, you use unconventional tactics to secure victory, non? Clear division of roles, coupled with individual plans of action, are crucial to ensure team performance in any condition and against any threat.

It is this concept of a "paramilitary organization" that drove me to propose to my Half the Sky discussion group that, while there are many, many individual solutions capable of bringing change to the oppressed, it is necessary to band all those separate efforts together under one unified banner.

One person blogging cannot be expected to change anything outside of her immediate community, but a team of bloggers retweeting and reposting each others' content across a multitude of social media platforms will have exponentially greater reach. This is how bloggers "look after" each other and ensure their survival in the vast, fast moving expanse of cyberspace. This is the kind of "combined arms warfare" that makes modern armed forces so powerful. We can use the same tools in our fight against oppression. So team up! Don't fight alone, when a team effort is a dozen times more powerful.

Even in the context of large scale human rights interventions, media outreach must go hand in hand with efforts in the field. Efforts in the field likewise must be connected to strong economic and political means to secure effective, long term improvements in the target nation. Without "strategic command" support plus support from our citizens back home, an individual operation might as well be completely forgotten in the days and weeks to come.

Okay, so we have come to that juncture. I am right now in the "one person blogging" scenario. Where do I get support? Surely, bugging people I've met during the Half the Sky screening would come off as annoying. Why, me the upstart, loudmouthed newbie having the chutzpah to personally stalk the organizers! Tailgating is not a sound strategy!

Speaking of chutzpah (it's a Yiddish word to illustrate gall, epicly silly bravery, etc) I decided to confront my worst fears to secure support from my local community. I confronted my employers, in line with what I had pledged to do during Solonia's Half the Sky discussions earlier this week.

My pledge was thus (in summary):

"To spread awareness that traditional chauvinistic / male psychology is indirectly encouraging gender exploitation."

In this regard, certainly, realistically, we do not expect everyone to be renaissance men, (Rachelle! Explain this term of yours to us please, por favor!) but earlier today a little heart to heart talk with my local Asian employer made him realize that even dominant males today must learn to be sensitive, adaptive and responsible in his actions and decisions.

I then stated that the modern professional world does not welcome the sort of gross ignorance and abusive attitudes shown by traditional male authority that forces women and girls to assume submissive roles. And my boss agreed wholeheartedly and indeed apologized for his past behavior towards me, promising me a secure future as a manager once the next senior colleague retires soon.

All this started from his commenting on my hairstyle and how it was improper for a male in a one to one meeting. I turned it against him by mentioning I went to a Half the Sky screening!

It is only a small battle won in a campaign of massive proportions, but to have confronted the main source of resistance to change in my life, on such short notice and with no support other than "God as my co-pilot", this is most encouraging to me indeed. And I hope it would be for you too, dear reader...

In closing, I state thus:

Outreach is not work. If you seek to fulfill what you love, cultural revolution is inevitable.

And secondly:

Sometimes you have to be David and take down the Goliah in your way, otherwise we will always be stuck in ground zero. Shock and awe is always effective against long term, static opposition, for their set ways make them vulnerable against post-modern "science fiction" adaptive tactics!

"What does not kill me... "

F.A.Q.

"What, how did the hair win over my employer!?"

You might want to refer to the concept of maskerovka - i.e., Russian style Strategic Deception, in yesterday's post!