Average White Male Confidence

A rant.

I orbit around and exist within several different circles/spheres, one of which is women in business. In this space, there is sometimes a playful dig at the whole ‘mediocre white male confidence’ thing, and an acknowledgement of the ‘boys club esque’ ways of doing things in recent (and unfortunately still current) history.

I recently attended what was supposed to be a workshop, as I understood it to be, within a community that I highly regard (run by a woman) for people in a specific field. (It wasn’t a space specifically for women in business - the above paragraph was just for context of my perspective - which I know FDSers will understand and appreciate! However, this woman is openly not much of a fan of the patriarchy, so to speak.)

At this event, there was a feature/guest speaker and he happened to be male. A ’veteran’ if you will, in the particular specialty he was to teach on. I was looking forward to this space because I have a LOT to learn on that particular topic!!



Well, oh my BARF.

99% of the session was this person name dropping the people he’s worked with over the years, rambling nonsensical anecdotes and providing close to ZERO value. Many of the participants were drooling over this clout signaling, but what was the actual value that was provided? The dude verbally vomited random shit and wouldn’t hardly let the interviewer get a question in edgeways - although I’m not sure whether the interviewer had any questions prepared at all, or just couldn't/didn't feel confident in leading/directing the discussion.

The whole time I was thinking, ok, ok, when is he actually going to get to the MEAT of it?
 To me - It really was a blatant, arrogant & obvious display of not having got to where he is through merit/skill/intelligence, but through contacts and boys club ‘mateship’. Look, I’m not saying the guy didn’t have any skill, he surely must to have the longevity that he has had in his field (other than being propped up by the patriarchy blah blah blah), and contacts are of course important for anyone, but he certainly had no skill in CONVEYING his knowledge, or imparting anything of actual value.

It really bothers me when people don’t realise that teaching/communicating is an art/skill in and of itself, and that just because someone is good at something, doesn’t mean they are good at teaching/communicating about it?

I’m definitely oscillating between feeling dirty for given him so much of my time and attention and him having some kind of a ‘wank’, and feeling like surely there must be something wrong with me and I’m ungrateful when several others expressed their gratitudes etc etc etc

I needed to have a rant somewhere where people might understand!! It’s hours of my time I will never get back and it was so poor quality an experience - which is NOT was I was expecting from this particular space as it is consistently HIGH quality. I really should have left about a third of the way in, but I thought 'surely this is going to be redirected to somewhere more useful soon...?" and then I think I sucked myself into the sunken cost fallacy... UHG!