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Driver’s Seat
By admin | April 27, 2008
Volkswagen ran an ad campaign awhile back that said, “Drivers Wanted.” For a car company, that’s an understandable call to action. But, when it comes to society and human interactions, can we all always be in the driver’s seat?
Dreams & Visions
After I started a new job recently, I had a dream that I was in a car being driven by the leader of my new office. In the front passenger seat was the firm’s second in command. I was in the back seat behind the second in command. Now, I guess that would be where the paralegal would sit in the hierarchy of a law office. But, in my dream, I saw myself moving as if to get out of the back seat. In waking reality, I have been planning a return to school so I can become an attorney, for me, a long educational road. Meanwhile….
I can think of two prior situations in personal relationships in which I was actually in that back seat position, behind the front passenger seat. In each of these situations, I chose that position, though unhappily. In one situation, feeling frustrated and not knowing where I fit, I took the position to which I believed I was being relegated. In the other, I also did not know what my place was, and took that seat by default.
Do What My Wife Does
Before working in law offices, I worked in construction. One of the foreman I worked with once said to me of our interactions, “You need to do what my wife does with me.” Around that time, I was taking a Psychology of Women class, and I recall the title of an article in the class textbook, Feminist Frontiers: “Must Women Operate the Family Switchboard?” Must I do what a wife does, but in the workplace? However, as I mentioned before, even in personal situations, I chose a backseat position, not fully understanding what I was doing. This is what the US Supreme Court said Lilly Ledbetter did in her employment situation.
Ignorance of the Law is No Excuse
This morning, I got an e-mail from People for the American Way reminding me of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last year in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., a case in which Ms. Ledbetter suffered obvious employment discrimination, unequal pay based on gender, which was simply business as usual within that company during Ms. Ledbetter’s term of employment. But after the company appealed the lower court’s decision in favor of Ms. Ledbetter, the Supremes denied Ms. Ledbetter relief. (PFAW wants to inform Minnesotans about a Republican governor they call a “Bush enabler,” and is seeking support for a new video ad.) The Court’s decision was guided by the Bush administration’s influence, as reported in the New York Times:
“Justice Thomas once headed the employment commission, the chief enforcer of workers’ rights under the statute at issue in this case, usually referred to simply as Title VII.
“Under its longstanding interpretation of the statute, the commission actively supported the plaintiff, Lilly M. Ledbetter, in the lower courts. But after the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case last June, the Bush administration disavowed the agency’s position and filed a brief on the side of the employer.”
Thereafter, the Court chose to apply Title VII legal protections in a way that afforded Ms. Ledbetter no protection at all despite obvious, longstanding discriminatory conduct. It never ceases to amaze me what people in power will tolerate, and what they will not, when it comes to basic human rights in relation to women.
Ok. Now, if I am opting out of the wife role, and I am not in the “driver’s seat,” based on the original hierarchy of the family, the only other role available would be that of the child. And that is the position I defaulted to in the car situations in waking reality.
Backseat Driver
Online dictionaries define “backseat driver” as a passenger who insists on giving the driver directions, or a meddler who insists on giving unwanted advice. So just what are my options if I am not a wife, not a child, not driving, not passive, and not a meddler? What, if anything, is available to me?
I have thought that I must find a way to assert myself from a position that is not the driver’s seat. After all, in life, in so many situations, I am not the driver, and I don’t want to be passive, nor do I want to be a meddler. But, does not being a driver automatically mean being passive? Does giving input as a non-driver automatically mean being a meddler? And, if not, then, as a passenger, of what may I be the driver? I think that vehicle … is me. And this is, quite aptly for my purposes here, called autonomy.
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