A CEO Named Mister

Photo by rawpixel.com rawpixel, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Remember the iconic Johnny Cash song, “A Boy Named Sue?”  Its about a man who—by chance—meets his long absent father and initiates a bar fight in retribution over naming him Sue.  The twist of the tune is that, as Sue is nearly about to kill the man, his father confesses that the name was intended to help his son develop resiliency as he anticipated his own absence.  Sue walks away from the altercation with a change of perspective and a more enlightened understanding of his father’s decision making regarding his name.

“…He must’ve thought that it was quite a joke
And I got a lot of laughs from a lots of folk
Seems I had to fight my whole life through
Some gal would giggle and I’d turn red
And some guy’d laugh and I’d bust his head
I tell you, life ain’t easy for a boy named Sue…

…And he said, “Son, this world is rough
And if a man’s gonna make it, he’s gotta be tough
And I knew I wouldn’t be there to help you along
So I give you that name, and I said goodbye
And I knew you’d have to get tough or die
It’s that name that helped to make you strong…

…What could I do?
I got all choked up and I threw down my gun
I called him my pa, and he called me his son
Come away with a different point of view…”

The song was actually written by the humorist and children’s author Shel Silverstein and was first performed live and unrehearsed by Johnny Cash at his San Quentin State prison performance on February 24, 1969.   The song resonated with the incarcerated men (who can be heard roaring with laughter in the background of the recording) as it touched on issues of survival, masculinity, gender, and both the plight of fatherless children and childless fathers.  The song spent five weeks at number one on the country charts and became Johnny Cash’s highest charting song on the Billboard Hot 100. It was Cash’s only song to ever reach the Top Ten on Billboard’s Top 100.  The Rolling Stone’s “Honky Tonk Women” was number one when “A Boy Named Sue” occupied the number two spot for three weeks in late summer 1969.

That song came to mind recently after I read about a female executive’s experience and follow-up social media post regarding being addressed as “Mister” by two Congressional Representatives while video-testifying before a House subcommittee.  While she didn’t attempt to kill anyone like Sue, from her perspective, the title of “Mr.,” used by Representatives Paul Tanko (D-NY) and Angie Craig (D-MN) was indicative of an unconscious bias that all executives in her industry are male.  She cited her daughters and female colleagues and expressed concern that being addressed incorrectly is a subtle suggestion that females do not belong.  She went on to say that “one of the ways we show respect [to others] is by correctly referring to someone in a way that acknowledges their gender.” The executive committed to speaking up in the future if something offends her, makes her feel as if she doesn’t belong, or does the same to another person.

As a female in what may be assumed to be ‘male dominated’ industry, I stewed on that for a while.  Consternation over pronouns and titles does not appear to be the exclusive domain of folks who are transgender, and I find it particularly interesting to consider this in a cis-normative context. With respect to this particular CEO, I disagree.  While she is considering her daughters and female colleagues, I am considering my sons and male employees.  Not that it isn’t respectful to reference someone’s gender in the way that person would prefer, but that it may not be disrespectful.

Unless everyone wants to adopt they / them and Mx., we are going to have to be forgiving when mistakes happen between masculine and feminine. I certainly do not want my sons or male colleagues to perceive that I believe masculine is offensive.  In the case of the CEO:  the lady doth protest too much.  People make honest mistakes all the time; it doesn’t mean they’re disrespectful, it means they’re human.

I recall visiting a girlfriend in the hospital years ago following the birth of her first baby.  There was a hospital employee in the hallway outside of what I thought was my friend’s room.  To confirm I was in the right place, I asked “Hi are you Carrie’s nurse?”   She replied, “No, but I am Carrie’s doctor.”  I immediately apologized and the doctor corrected me, “Do not apologize.  I take it as a compliment when people assume I’m a nurse because nurses are more caring and much more approachable than doctors.  Besides, men are nurses too!”

This exchange happened over twenty years ago, but I’ve never forgotten it.  Did I exhibit unconscious bias?  Most definitely.  Was it because I think women can’t be physicians?  No.  Was I trying to make the doctor feel disrespected or as if she didn’t belong?  No.  And since when is being a nurse offensive?  Never.  The lessons I took from the interaction were twofold:  try to avoid assumptions, and if someone else makes an incorrect one, don’t sweat it.

I’ve never been referred to as Mr. Worrel, and I am frequently the only woman at the table.  However, most of my professional peers are male.  If my surname were included on a list of industry colleagues, I can imagine a scenario where someone might refer or think of me as “Mr. Worrel.”  I just don’t care.

I would love to ask my coworkers, Kim, Jody, and Shannon about their thoughts on women being misgendered, because….they are all male!    They’ve routinely had to correct people from referring to them with female pronouns or titles, and to my knowledge, they’ve never taken that fight into the streets like Sue or to the interwebs like the CEO.

While I’m not sure that any of the three of their names were the brainchild of absent fathers, I never witnessed Kim, Jody, or Shannon reacting as though being mistakenly referred to as being female was offensive or as though the occurrence was the pinnacle of egregiousness.  I actually asked Kim about it once, “Doesn’t that bother you?”  He was my boss at the time, and he had worked previously as a Human Resources leader.  His response was, “I love women, they’re wonderful!”  He mentioned his mother, his wife, and employees like me.  Reacting as though female somehow equated to something worth getting upset over was a roadblock in building relationships:  with women generally, and with anyone who’d made the mistake.  The solution, he said, was to simply get to know people.

Recently, I received an email at work and only glanced at the preview first line of the digital message.  It read, “Jesus, is this completed yet?”  I immediately marched myself down the hall to the sender of the email to remind them that harshly worded emails are inappropriate in a professional environment.  My coworker was confused and replied that the email was directed at a new employee in the accounting department, a man of Hispanic heritage named Jesús.  I had never met or heard of Jesús, but I still felt like a real jerk.

My co-worker explained that Jesús had just transferred along with another employee, Riley, into our accounting team.

“Oh, I haven’t met Riley either.  What group did he come from?” I asked.

“Riley is a woman,” replied my coworker.

My unconscious bias knows no bounds, apparently.

I have now officially met Riley as well.  She and Jesús are wonderful additions to our corporate team.

But is unconscious bias actually disrespectful?  Is it, in the words of the female—Not Mr.—CEO, indicative of gender bias?  I do not think so.  It may be just the way human minds work.  Unconscious biases are stereotypes that form outside of individual’s conscious awareness stemming from the mind’s tendency to organize by categorization.  If unconscious bias is formed outside of human awareness, it is inaccurate to call it exclusionary or disrespectful because those require intent.  There is a huge difference between anticipating a person’s gender based only on knowing their occupation or name and believing that only certain genders can perform certain jobs or have certain names.  That the majority of CEOs are male is a far cry from only males can be CEOs.  That the majority of nurses are female is a far cry from only females can be nurses.

Several years ago, during the 2016 presidential election, a friend commented that she could never vote for Hilary Clinton because she could never vote for a woman for president.  My retort was that while there were plenty of excellent reasons not to vote for Clinton, being female was not among them.  That is much bigger problem:  the conscious bias of believing individuals– because of their gender–are incapable or unworthy of certain responsibilities.  Unintentionally misgendering someone is merely the product of years of routine patterns and the mind’s tendency to categorize.  Are the zebras offended when we hear hooves and think horses?  We all know zebras have hooves.

Does the CEO of the American subsidiary of one of the world’s largest companies really think two Democrats (one of them female) were intentionally disrespecting her or signaling to her that she was unworthy of her job while on a Zoom meeting?    In the same way that calling elderly relatives “racists” won’t convince them to stop referring to people of Asian decent as “Orientals,” reframing unconscious bias is more effectively accomplished with the lenity of my friend’s doctor and my former boss than it is by countering mistakes with accusations of gender bias.

Perhaps we all need to take a lesson from the fifty-year old perspective offered by a Boy Named Sue and the gallows-humor-profundity of the San Quentin inmates.  The world is a much more inclusive place when people are open to different points of view and willing to both learn from and laugh off unintentional mistakes.  Most people are just doing the best they can.  Meeting them with grace and mercy accomplishes much more than reacting in offense.  And besides, if the worst thing that ever happens to me is that someone I don’t know calls me Mister, I’ll be a grateful woman.  I love men.  They’re wonderful.