Weaponizing competence
Which is also a thing
Today write about a time when your competence was used against you. Perhaps being good at something quietly made you the default person to handle it. Or, maybe the very leadership skills that got praised in your mediocre colleague got you punished for the same actions due to gender bias. Or perhaps your partner engaged in that ol’ “weaponized incompetence” bullshit to ensure a given group of tasks were yours alone. Or something else entirely.
I ran squarely into this shitty sort of trap years ago when one of my male colleagues, who indeed did fine work, was praised for a leadership feat and encouraged to be more assertive. Despite being more senior and with more things to manage, I was admonished for being assertive and told under no uncertain terms that kind of thing made women “harder to like.” Oh, the layers! I mean, pull at the threads a little and it quickly becomes clear the boss believed women are already unlikeable.
But the fix isn’t to name it and forget it. It’s to deeply sift through it and deepen the nature of conversations around things like that so we can fucking do better.
Don’t just recap the thing in your writing. Ask yourself: Who benefitted? Who noticed? Who didn’t?
Free write into this idea and see what comes up for you. I’m going to guess you might end up with so much on the page that you might ultimately split the writing up into 2-3 different pieces that are all on the same theme but that accomplish different things or ask different questions of the reader.
But it’s also my hope that you reflect while you’re on the topic (during or after the writing) and ask yourself these questions, too: Is this still happening for me, and if so, in what form? What is the cost to my creative work or visibility? What boundary, delegation, or realignment would change this without waiting for external permission?
