Defending Yourself

Some weeks I find a re-occurring theme going on in my life. This week it has been the idea of defending yourself or your thoughts and beliefs. I am in a class where I train students interpersonal skills and this week it was responding to defensiveness. I also have been having to defend myself in my Women in the Arts class. My professor gave us a test last week that we just turned in this week. I expressed my frustration with her answer key last week as she disagree with answers that were in the book which was our source to study from.

 

After a heated discussion she let the class go and pulled me aside to discuss my frustration. To be honest, I left the room annoyed and quite angry with her. It seemed like she thought I was the only one with the problem and that I was not understanding what she was saying. I never said I did not understand, but that I did not agree. She came back with saying I needed to defend myself. I stepped back trying to distance myself from my teacher because I was defending myself and realized the conversation was going nowhere.

 

Yesterday she chose a video to watch in class and spoke to me individually. The conversation was odd again. It seemed to me that she chose the video directly because of me and we came back to me not understanding again.

 

I felt at a loss with this woman. I was trying to defend myself and she continued to keep telling me to defend my beliefs. We have spent a lot of class time talking about how we have to defend ourselves as women since men have more power in this world, but I realized how much we have to defend ourselves with other women. I do believe women have to work hard in this world due to our continuance of trying to have equality with men; however, I think we need to remember whom we may be pushing out of the way as we defend ourselves. Are we pushing other women away? Putting them down? Where is the real power struggle?

 

I guess my point is that you should always stand up for what you believe in and own your opinion, but be aware of how your defense may attack another's. 

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