Rats, I did it again. Sorry.
No, wait. NOT SORRY. That is the theme. It is an issue that keeps popping up, so I figured I'd slap it in the ol' blog.
Over-apologizing, specifically by people of the female persuasion.
Just over a month ago, I started (round two) of tennis lessons. I took some a couple of years ago, then I had that job with the long commute and I couldn't make any lessons offered locally, so I dropped it. So I'm getting back into it, which is good, I guess. But guess what? Can I hit the darn ball? Only about 50% of the time. But I can apologize 100% of the time! And I am really, really good at apologizing. When I actually do something bad. When I make a harmless mistake. When I am trying to be non-threatening. When I am trying to "encourage" someone apologize to me--like, if I do it, maybe they'll do it, too?!? Yeah, isn't that something?
So my tennis-lesson colleague, Tara, and I made a pact: no more gratuitous apologizing. If we miss it or shoot it way the heck over the fence and into the road or whatever, we do not apologize. We just walk it off! Unless you actually serve into someone's back. Then you can say "sorry." (Sorry again, Tara.) Old habits die hard. I accidentally apologized, like, five times at our last practice. But I am not sorry about it.
And then this really great article shows up on FB: Raising Confident Girls: When Apologizing is Not a Good Thing (PBS Parents). You can read it yourself; you don't need me to paraphrase it for you. But basically, girls "outperforming" boys at apologizing, and being expected and socialized to do so. And conflict avoidance. LOTS of conflict avoidance.
And then today, I see this nifty article about girls' and women's rock camps in the Twin Cities. (One of my buddies teaches for them.) The article: These Girls Rock (St. Louis Park magazine). So I'm all reading along, happy about rock music and so forth, and then: "The teachers go through the rules of camp on day one, performed in skits, and 'one of the rules is you’re not allowed to apologize,' Case says. 'You say, "I rock!"'"
So now I have something to say when I flub another tennis ball. "I rock!"
In the interest of transparency, however, I was not listening to rock music when writing this. I was listening to yodeling.
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