Famous Speech Friday: Minn. Rep. Hortman calls out white male colleagues

She wasn't speaking. Another woman legislator, Rep. Ilhan Omar, America's first Somali-American legislator, had just spoken against a public safety bill before the Minnesota state legislature.

But Rep. Melissa Hortman, the body's minority leader, had taken the measure of the room, and didn't like what she saw...or more precisely, didn't see. Most of the white male legislators had left the floor of the state House of Representatives for the cloakroom, where a card game was in progress. It's another way of silencing women speakers, by denying them an audience.

So Rep. Hortman moved to force them to come back to the chamber to listen to their fellow representatives, particularly the women of color who were speaking. And she made plain what the situation was: “I hate to break up the 100 percent white male card game in the retiring room, but I think this is an important debate,” she said.

Angry, one of her male colleagues rose to brand her remarks as "inappropriate," that marvelous vague epithet so often leveled at women speakers who speak their minds. So Rep. Hortman made a little speech in reply, saying, in part:

I have no intention of apologizing. I am so tired of watching Rep. Susan Allen give an amazing speech, Rep. Peggy Flanagan give an amazing speech, watching Rep. Jamie Becker-Finn give an amazing speech, Rep. Rena Moran give the most heartfelt, incredible speech I’ve heard on this House floor, as long as I can remember, watching Rep. Ilhan Omar give an amazing speech ... and looking around, to see, where are my colleagues? And I went in the retiring room, and I saw where a bunch of my colleagues were, and I’m really tired of watching women of color, in particular, being ignored. So, I’m not sorry.

Her refusal to apologize caused a furor of opposition from those white, male colleagues, but Rep. Hortman held her ground. What can you learn from this famous speech?

• If you see something, say something: Using even a short speech to describe what you see around you can be both simple and powerful, as speaking tactics go (and it's well suited to the fishbowl of a legislature and to extemporaneous remarks). The evidence of your eyes is testimony of a different sort.
• Say it plain: While the reactions focused on how "inappropriate" it was to single out white men, Hortman's remarks had both accuracy and force going for them, because she said plainly what was happening.
• Use the floor to lend visibility: Rep. Hortman didn't just use her remarks to call out the absentee legislators, but to note the speaking skills of her colleagues who are women of color, a gracious gesture that underscore her point that women speakers were being ignored.

Watch the video of her remarks below.

(Minnesota State Legislature photo)



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Do your company's meetings and offsites need a code of conduct?

In the recently released "Holder report" recommendations prepared by Covington & Burling for Uber about its corporate culture and needed changes, there was buried a recommendation that women speakers should know about: Codes of conduct should apply to both in-house meetings and offsite meetings.

Why companies like Uber get away with bad behavior puts a finger on this recommendation:

[The report] also said that workplace rules governing sexual harassment and other prohibited behavior should extend to offsite conferences and meetings. “It should not be necessary to draft separate policies for these events,” it added dryly.

You'll find that in section VIII., item A, under "EEO Policies" in the Holder memo linked above. And they're right: You shouldn't need a code of conduct for offsite vs. on-site meetings of your organization. But women in any workplace might want to check on a few policies of their employers just now.

Why? Because codes of conduct help women speakers to speak in a setting that is free of harrassment, one of the more aggressive ways of silencing women. And I'm betting you don't know what your company or organization requires, if anything, of meeting participants, so you should find out. Codes of conduct are often a focus when we talk about attending conferences, but you'll have many more meetings that take place under your own organization's auspices, so why not have codes of conduct articulated there, too? Questions you might want to ask include:

• Do we have a code of conduct for our organization in general? Is it clear that the code applies to any meeting in which our employees and visitors are participating? If not, why not?
• Do we have a code of conduct for our meetings, including those with visitors? For our offsite meetings? If not, why not?
• Have there been complaints of harrassment at any of our meetings, onsite or offsite, internal or with visitors?
• If we have policies, what are we actively doing to make employees, managers, and visitors aware of them?

My post Does your conference have a harrassment code of conduct? I wish mine did shares a sample code from SecondConf, and there are plenty of examples online if you need a model.

You might get some pushback or questions about why you're raising this issue just now, and Uber has given you the perfect cover to do so. "I've been reading about all the issues at Uber, and I want to make sure none of that ever happens here. The attorneys who did the review made specific mention of company meetings and offsites as situations that should have a code of conduct, so I wondered whether we had one, too," is all you need to say. That'll get their attention. And if you want to be sure there's a record of your request, follow up your conversation with an email, and keep a copy.

What happens if your request is ignored? That's what happened when I complained to my longtime conference about harrassment. Instead of addressing the problem, they consulted an attorney. The following year, attendees were required to tick a box when registering, promising not to sue the organization. That told me all I needed to know, and I stopped attending. You can take your skills elsewhere, too, or you can make that part of a further complaint. It's called "voting with your feet," and many have suggested riders do the same with Uber to make their disapproval known.

We often wonder whether we can make a change in an area as big and amorphous as this one. But if every reader of this blog asked her human resources office about this policy, you'd start seeing change. Feel free to forward this blog post if you like. And if every reader of this blog attending meetings hosted by other organizations--not just formal conferences--asked, "What is your code of conduct for meetings?" you'd find eventual change there, too. Let's use Uber's very public misconduct as a lever to make meetings more hospitable for women speakers, shall we?

(Creative Commons licensed photo by Lucas Maystre)

Get involved in more conversations on public speaking with The Eloquent Woman. Follow our Facebook page, read great quotes from eloquent woman on Pinterest, or follow me as @dontgetcaught on Twitter. Learn how to be a better panel moderator with The Eloquent Woman's Guide to Moderating Panels.

The Eloquent Woman's weekly speaker toolkit

Savvy speakers keep up with my wide-ranging reading list on women and public speaking by following The Eloquent Woman on Facebook, where these links and articles appear first. I always collect them here for you on Mondays as well. It's a great way to expand your public speaking knowledge:

• Siri, read this to me: Siri is dying. Long live Susan Bennett is an interview with the woman who's the voice of Apple's Siri virtual assistant, one of the most famous speaking roles ever for a woman.
• While I was out: During my social media and blogging hiatus, on just one day, we saw two high-profile episodes in which prominent women were manterrupted and told women talk too much. Susan Chira summed it up, along with the research, in The Universal Phenomenon of Men Interrupting Women. Read it. Share it. Start discussing it out loud.
• Did you miss? This week, the blog looked at The double standard of the severed head, and Famous Speech Friday shared remarks from Bette Midler at the 2017 Tony Awards, which included a jab from the host for her long acceptance speech.
• About the quote: Don't tone it down, eloquent women. Wisdom from actor Zooey Deschanel.

Get involved in more conversations on public speaking with The Eloquent Woman. Follow our Facebook page, read great quotes from eloquent woman on Pinterest, or follow me as @dontgetcaught on Twitter. Learn how to be a better panel moderator with The Eloquent Woman's Guide to Moderating Panels.

Famous Speech Friday: Bette Midler at the 2017 Tony Awards

Bette Midler, currently starring in the revival of the musical play "Hello, Dolly!" on Broadway, is what they call a triple threat: She can sing, dance, and act. And on the heels of her moment of triumph at the 2017 Tony Awards, having won the award for best leading actress in a musical, host Kevin Spacey reached for joke material from one of the oldest myths in the book about women in public speaking: That they talk too much.

Midler, like many a top-winning actor whose prize comes at the height of the Tony Awards show, didn't feel compelled to stick to the 90-second limit imposed this year on acceptance speeches. She did a fulsome three paragraphs of thanks, working without notes to name-check many people involved in the enormous cast of her sold-out show. And just before she got to the windup of her speech, the band tried to drown her out, cleverly using Irving Berlin's "There's No Business Like Show Business," in the part of the song where the lyrics say "Let's go on with the show!"

Midler was having none of it. She surfed the music, continuing her delivery. Finally, realizing the music wasn't going to stop, she interrupted herself, getting cheers from the audience in the hall:

And I just want to say, I want to say, revival...shut that crap off!

Then she continued past the thanks to make the core point of her speech, sans music. It's a good one, worth hearing:

I just want to say that revival is an interesting word. It means that something is near death, and it was brought back to life. Hello, Dolly! never really went away. It has been here all along. It is in our DNA, it is in our national songs that will live forever. It is optimism, it is democracy, it's color, it's love of life, it's hilarity. This is a classic. Come and see it. It's not just me! The whole thing is utterly... this thing has the ability to lift your spirits in these terrible, terrible times. Come and see it.  

And lastly, I want to dedicate this, I want to salute the people who actually came before me. The brilliant, brilliant inimitable Carol Channing, who made my life, who was a gift to me. The extraordinary Pearl Bailey, and all of the hundreds of women who came after me and who lit the way, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. Thank you all.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, along with her thanks paragraphs, took up just 4 minutes and 10 seconds. Not a crisis in television, nor in public speaking.

In one of his next turns as host, actor Kevin Spacey came onstage with actor Robin Wright, dressed as their characters from the Netflix series House of Cards: President Frank Underwood and First Lady Claire Underwood. In the very short bit, he tells his wife they should leave, and then adds, "I want to get out of here before Bette Midler thanks anyone else." And tellingly, Wright said nothing while onstage, a silent wife witness. See it in the video below:



What can you learn from this famous speech?

• Sometimes, you need to hold your ground as a speaker: Midler's show is sold out for months to come, and, as such, it's a major money-maker for the industry. She won one of the top prizes of the evening. Her cast and crew are enormous, among the largest on Broadway. No apology need be made for wishing to thank them amply and make a larger point, as the best speeches do. And I doubt a man would be shamed in such a way for speaking too long.
• Make that larger point: Midler took a musical that's set as the 19th century gives way to the 20th, and brought it all the way forward to today with her closing remarks, reminding the audience why Broadway works: "Hello, Dolly! never really went away. It has been here all along. It is in our DNA, it is in our national songs that will live forever. It is optimism, it is democracy, it's color, it's love of life, it's hilarity."
• Her thanks were a tour de force: Many actors thank a few people well, and many more thank many people poorly. But listen to Midler work her way with relative ease through her long list of thanks. *That* is a bravura performance, and one her work partners surely appreciate.

I love you, Kevin Spacey, and I figure you had that joke set up with a blank where you put Bette Midler up for shame. Next time, think harder. I expect better from you, especially on a night when the rest of your hosting was outstanding.

Watch the video of Midler's speech here or below.




Get involved in more conversations on public speaking with The Eloquent Woman. Follow our Facebook page, read great quotes from eloquent woman on Pinterest, or follow me as @dontgetcaught on Twitter. Learn how to be a better panel moderator with The Eloquent Woman's Guide to Moderating Panels.

Women and power? The double standard of the severed head

When TMZ leaked this photo of comedian Kathy Griffin holding what appeared to be a bloody severed head of U.S. President Donald Trump in late May, the Internet exploded. Griffin was resoundingly mocked and trolled and shamed into apologizing. Pundits and commentators expressed shock and horror. She was widely criticized, with only a few voices coming to her defense. Griffin was dubbed a "tool of ISIS" by many conservative and liberal commentators. CNN and others fired Griffin from lucrative gigs and endorsement deals immediately in the wake of the criticisms.

I was left feeling as if I was the only person whose first reaction was to see a double standard at play. Yes, a severed head is a gory, awful image. It's also an image that has been used for centuries in our worldwide culture...often against powerful women. So why, when a woman uses it, is she shut down and shamed?

There were layers of double standards at play here. One was in the world of comedy. For example, comedian Hasan Minhaj earlier in May hosted the White House Correspondents Dinner in Washington. Even though the president had said he would not attend, the correspondents' organization asked Minhaj not to roast Trump; normally, roasting the president not only happens, but happens with him sitting right there next to the comedian doing the roasting. In an interview, Minhaj explained why he felt free to ignore that request:

The irony to me was the theme of the night was about honoring the First Amendment, and you want me to censor myself? That to me — I couldn't do it. ... Especially given the fact that the person that I'm roasting, the president, is someone who has so exploited that incredible privilege of free speech. The man who tweets whatever enters his head doesn't even want to honor the amendment that allows him to do it. That to me just blows my mind. So I wanted to make the conscious choice of, Hey, I will roast his merit and I will roast the decisions he's made. I will try to be as tasteful as possible, but I have to talk about this.

Minhaj went ahead with that plan, with no or minimal outcry following. The comedy double standard reminded me of The 'women can't be funny' myth, and the power of making people laugh, in which I quoted Gloria Steinem saying, "...the power to make people laugh is also a power, so women have been kept out of comedy. Polls show that what women fear most from men is violence, and what men fear most from women is ridicule."

So you've seen the ridicule of a man in the image at the top of this post. Here's the violence against women, in its mirror. It demonstrates the gendered double standard at play here. Having written about classics scholar Mary Beard's lecture on women and power for our Famous Speech Friday series, I had this image, shared in her lecture, firmly in mind:

It's a depiction of Trump as Perseus, victoriously holding up the severed head of Medusa as Hillary Clinton, an image widely used in fan-generated promotional material during the Trump campaign, as Beard notes:

This scene of Perseus-Trump brandishing the dripping, oozing head of Medusa-Clinton was very much part of the everyday, domestic American decorative world: you could buy it on T-shirts and tank tops, on coffee mugs, on laptop sleeves and tote bags (sometimes with the logo TRIUMPH, sometimes TRUMP). It may take a moment or two to take in that normalisation of gendered violence, but if you were ever doubtful about the extent to which the exclusion of women from power is culturally embedded or unsure of the continued strength of classical ways of formulating and justifying it – well, I give you Trump and Clinton, Perseus and Medusa, and rest my case.

Let that sink in again: "the exclusion of women from power is culturally embedded...the continued strength of classical ways of formulating it and justifying it." I inserted the link in the quote above so you can see for yourself how these shirts and other products are still available.

Pouncing on Griffin and shaming her so thoroughly, then, reflects something embedded in our culture, just because she is a woman.

Clinton is not the only woman leader to get this treatment, which has been used to depict powerful women over and over again, but depictions of her as Medusa were, as Beard notes, among the "starkest and nastiest" of all. And was there any outcry? Why, no, there was not, save for Beard. Neither did the Trump campaign decry these fan efforts, nor try to stop them.

Imagery is a major part of public speech, and images are important--witness that the severed head of Medusa has been used for centuries, so durable and memorable it is. Comedy, more recently, has been an important area where women have been able to find their voices and say the outrageous, just as men have done for centuries. But when a woman comedian reaches for that durable, memorable, outrageous image, why do we silence her? If only the reaction from the media and the public were as fierce when the severed head was Hillary Clinton's. If only.

Get involved in more conversations on public speaking with The Eloquent Woman. Follow our Facebook page, read great quotes from eloquent woman on Pinterest, or follow me as @dontgetcaught on Twitter. Learn how to be a better panel moderator with The Eloquent Woman's Guide to Moderating Panels.

The Eloquent Woman's weekly speaker toolkit

Savvy speakers keep up with my wide-ranging reading list on women and public speaking by following The Eloquent Woman on Facebook, where these links and articles appear first. I always collect them here for you on Mondays as well. It's a great way to expand your public speaking knowledge. This week, a short report following my June hiatus from the blog:

• Two decisions: While on hiatus, I made two decisions about my social media presence. First, I'm going to stop posting on @NoWomenSpeakers on Twitter, because there are so many good eyes and ears on the task of identifying and calling out conferences with few or no women speakers--something that was not the case when I first started that account. If you follow me there, please follow me @dontgetcaught instead. Second, I'm going to fold the Moderating Panels blog into this blog, so you'll be able to see more coverage of panel moderation right here. The MP blog will stay up as an archive, but any new posts will be on The Eloquent Woman. I love both these projects, and think the changes will allow me to provide you with even better public speaking information in the months to come.
• Case in point: Why we aim for 50% of speakers at Digital Freedom Festival to be women, and why it matters for everyone shares another case study for change from a conference organizer in Latvia who woke up after she organized a conference with just one woman speaker.
• About the quote: Your voice matters, eloquent women. Wisdom from Hillary Clinton.

Get involved in more conversations on public speaking with The Eloquent Woman. Follow our Facebook page, read great quotes from eloquent woman on Pinterest, or follow me as @dontgetcaught on Twitter. Learn how to be a better panel moderator with The Eloquent Woman's Guide to Moderating Panels.

Taking a blog and social media hiatus for June 2017

I'm waist-deep when it comes to the river of blogging and social media, with three blogs, the two oldest blogs turning 12 and 10 years old this year. That's a lot of blogging, and that's not all. My total tally in the social media world includes

• three blogs
• two Twitter accounts
• two Facebook business pages, along with my more private personal account
• one Google+ account and one Google+ community
• LinkedIn
• Pinterest
• and I'm very likely forgetting something, which is not a good sign.

This post isn't about expanding that universe, but about letting it contract a tad. Specifically: I'm taking a social-media hiatus for the month of June 2017. 

Here's what that means for me: I'm really not going to post anything, including on my non-public accounts. That will mean not sharing photos, not writing posts, not observing, not sharing. 

Social media posting doesn't take up a ton of my time on any given day, but reviewing material, deciding what to share, monitoring comments and interactions, and writing are the biggest time-users. I put in plenty of screen time, and am hoping that that's what will be missing in June while I spend time the old-school way, in person.

I'm not burnt out on the blogs--indeed, they are a constant source of renewal for me--but I am curious about such hiatuses when I hear of them. So now's the time to try.

Of course, if you're a client or a would-be client wishing to get in touch, I encourage that heartily. Email me directly at eloquentwoman AT gmail DOT com. A social media hiatus is not, for me, a work hiatus, so I will continue working with clients and looking for new ones. But I also expect I'll have some time for longer-form projects like books, and I'll be back in July with some fantastic posts for you.

Thanks for reading, and see you in July!

(Creative Commons licensed photo by nchenga)

Get involved in more conversations on public speaking with The Eloquent Woman. Follow our Facebook page, read great quotes from eloquent woman on Pinterest, follow me as @dontgetcaught on Twitter or track when others tweet about the lack of women speakers on programs via @NoWomenSpeakers. Learn how to be a better panel moderator with The Eloquent Woman's Guide to Moderating Panels.