It’s Castigador in Spanish

I try not to sit at the head of any tables.

At my (nearly) exclusively female workplace, in meetings, there is some deference paid to me (my point of view) b/c I’m the man.
Sometimes, by some women.
There is something saccharine about it though. A way taught to behave (or possibly their perception that I expect it?).

And somehow then, a falseness that comes between us. I feel I’m being tolerated – allowed to be this different creature that must be tolerated because I’m different from the assembled sisterhood.
This almost always by the younger. The older ladies seem to recognize the slight and work their gentle bridge-making.
That saccharine moment is the divide, the outcasting, what makes me both want to prove myself, and to shut up/keep my head down.
Caste

Castle

Castigate

Castigador.

Of course, I flatter myself believing that anyone gives me any thought at all.

One funny corollary to white male privilege is the “What Is Wrong With You, That You Do This For A Living?” category that I attribute some of my experiences toward. Since moving to a campus in an affluent neighborhood, I have felt it coming from (for the first time in any measurable degree) the community I serve.

How much of that is my own stuff? – knowing my children will be the first in my family who’s daddy can’t pay for their college, and being asked by my students if I’m also going skiing over the winter break (while their moms smile politely and look down-and-to-the-left.  Down & to the left! Everyone! Down and to the left!).

Sometime, the hardest task for me is to remain focused on my goals and not involve myself with the prejudices (goals?) of others, -even when the voice comes from my internal ‘Castigador’ (what are his goals?).

I get distracted by the outcasting, by my need to belong.

Cast a wide net.