Stephanie Vardavas is an attorney, mediator, arbitrator, writer, product safety / compliance consultant, and an adjunct professor of sports business at the University of Oregon, based in Portland, Oregon. Stephanie has spent 40+ years in the sports industry, is a library advocate, a Macintosh user for over 35 years, a prolific writer on Quora, a Baltimore Orioles fan, a Star Wars devotee, an active Democrat, a proud union member, a theater enthusiast, an unrepentant Anglophile, and a Life Member of the Jane Austen Society of North America. She owns more than 400 pairs of shoes. None of them are brown.
National Organization for Women (N.O.W.)
"Gender Outlaw” by Kate Bornstein
The Virtual Community by Howard Rheingold
Stephanie:
My mother graduated from high school in 1947. I think part of the reason my mother was unhappy was that she was frustrated. She was an intelligent woman and she had not really, I mean, she worked and she was very good at the various jobs that she had, but she didn't have a degree. And I think part of the reason that she and I had some tensions later is that she was a little bit jealous of me or envious. And when I look at young women today, I have moments of envy. I look at them and I say, wow, you know, where was this when I needed it? And the answer is it's there now because I needed it then.
Shervin:
This is On Misogyny, a conversation series exploring sexism and misogyny. Like many men, I have a blind spot when it comes to the female experience, especially as it pertains to the systemic hostility, prejudice, and violence they face on a regular basis, and this resulted in me believing that I was a better ally than I actually was, and not fully appreciating how little it changed for women and just how much more needed to happen. In each episode, I speak with a guest who wants to help me learn. They share their stories and in doing so, they're teaching me. While I started this project as a personal quest, the lessons here can help others, too. Pleading ignorance is no longer a satisfactory defense with that. Let's begin.
Shervin:
I'm excited about this conversation today because I feel like we know each other, although this is the first time that we've actually spoken or met, and we're even meeting virtually. I'll share why I'm excited, but first, could you please introduce yourself?
Stephanie:
My name is Stephanie Vardavas and I live in Portland, Oregon. I am 65 years old. I have worked in the sports industry my entire career. Since graduating from college, I worked 10 years at Major League Baseball in New York City. During that time I went to law school at night. I then worked eight years at an agency that represented athletes in Arlington, Virginia. And then in 1997, I was recruited to a position as a sports marketing attorney for Nike. I worked at Nike for 14 years in a series of different specialties. I did sports marketing at the beginning, but I branched into other specialties later on. And since leaving Nike in 2011, I have had my own law practice. I also now teach in the sports product management program at the University of Oregon here in Portland. The program was founded by another Nike alum, and the teaching staff is, not entirely, but highly populated with other Nike alums. So it's a really satisfying part of my career today.
Shervin:
There's so much to get into just there. There are a few things that drew me to want to know who you are and what your story is. We met on Telepath. And the first thing that made me aware of you was your posts of the shoes that you were wearing. And I have a similar — um, it's not even on the same scale of you — but I have a similar sort of obsession with footwear. That's sort of what began that for me. And we can certainly talk about that, but more materially, I think more interestingly, and why as part of the On Misogyny project, I want to talk to you: you were with the MLB and I'm guessing you may have been the only female executive there at one point. Tell me about your experience there.
Stephanie:
So I was at Major League Baseball from 1979 to 1989, and I was one of the first two people hired in the Major League Baseball Executive Development Program, where they hire a couple people fresh out of school. And the idea is that you train them for a potential career in baseball by rotating them among different, Major League Baseball offices in New York City. In those days, the offices were all in different buildings. So the American League, National League, Player Relations, the Commissioner's Office, the Major League Baseball Productions, and what's now called Properties were all in five separate buildings. There was actually a physical rotation that was contemplated when I was hired, and although I ended up being snagged on the first day – literally after lunch on the first day – I went to work in the Player Relations Committee where they were preparing for the next collective bargaining negotiations. I ended up staying there for 16 months. So that did put a little bit of a damper on the whole rotation aspect of what I was gonna do. There were women in fairly senior roles, a few in baseball at the time in the central offices. There was a woman who was the corporate secretary, sort of the vice president of the National League. Her title wasn't vice president, but she was an executive of the national league and very highly placed and respected. The woman who was the head of public relations communications for the American League, became one of my closest friends. There was a woman with a similar job in the National League, although she was the league president's daughter. I'm here to tell you that may have helped her get in the door, but she was really, really good at what she did—but certainly it never hurts to be the league president's daughter, basically anywhere that you wanna be. In the Commissioner's Office, there were really not women in senior positions. This is when Bowie Kuhn was commissioner. And Bowie was – he insisted that I call him Bowie after I left, while I was still there – he was, you know, commissioner, but he was always extremely kind to me and generous with his time. There was a little bit of a paternalistic edge to it. I think more than he certainly didn't view me as an equal, but he was kind, which is the most important thing. And generous to me, there weren't really senior women in the Commissioner's Office. There were a couple of senior women in the player relations committee and productions and properties, but overall, it was not a place where there were a lot of role models, I would say, for me to look up to.
Shervin:
What is your earliest memory of either sexism or overt misogyny?
Stephanie:
Well, I remember when I was a little girl, probably eight or nine, telling my mother that I hated being a girl and I would like to be a boy. And I couldn't tell you, I don't remember now what the provocation for that was. I have no recollection of that part, but I remember having this feeling that being a girl was just not as good as being a boy, and saying something to my mother about it. And you know what, to be honest, I don't really remember what she said, except that it wasn't necessarily all that helpful. I do remember that she told me that she had told her own mother when she was a girl that she wanted to be a doctor when she grew up. And her mother had said to her, you can't be a doctor. Boys can be doctors, girls can be nurses. And that pissed my mother off at that young age. And when the time came – my mother graduated from high school in 1947 – her father asked her if she wanted to go to college. He offered to pay for her to go to the University of Maryland, which is where we lived. and she said, "No." She felt like she was done with school. But I think she would've been a happier person if she had gone to college, lived away from home, and had some more experiences in the world. I actually think if she had decided to become a doctor, she would've kicked ass as a doctor. I think part of the reason my mother was unhappy was that she was frustrated. She was an intelligent woman and she had not really, I mean, she worked and she was very good at the various jobs that she had, but she didn't have a degree. And I think part of the reason that she and I had some tensions later is that she was a little bit jealous of me, or envious. I don't blame her for that because I was getting opportunities that she wasn't really getting. And when I look at young women today, I have moments of envy. I look at them and I say, "Wow, you know, where was this, where was this when I needed it?" And the answer is, it's there now because I needed it then. So I feel like I have a little bit of ownership in the fact that there are more opportunities for young women today.
Shervin:
That's such a thoughtful way of framing it, that the fruits come years after the seeds are planted in effect. It also sounded to me like, to be able to fully realize your own existence at some level, you needed to almost escape your environment, because of the, maybe the expectations that, well men do these things and women do these things. Was that what going to Major League Baseball was like for you? Were you sort of getting out of a certain environment?
Stephanie:
Well, going to Yale was that for me. I grew up in suburban Baltimore and my parents are Greek Americans, or were Greek Americans; they're both gone now. My mother had some pretty fixed ideas about the kind of life that she expected me to have. And those ideas included that I would go to college, but she wanted me to go to Goucher College, which was about five miles from our house. She did tell me that if I went to Goucher, she would've wanted me to live in a dormitory so I could have the full college experience. Goucher in those days was a girl's college; it's co-ed today. But it was a women's college then, and that was her vision for me. And then I would get a job locally. I would live in Baltimore. I would live near her. Hopefully I would marry somebody. I think marrying somebody Greek, Greek American, wasn't an essential part of her vision, as long as that person treated me well. I would provide her with grandchildren. And that was my gig as she viewed it. When I was in high school, I kind of knew that the only escape that I would have from the situation I was in was to get into college someplace that was so great, that they wouldn't tell me I couldn't go. So that was why I applied to Yale and Harvard, and I got into both Yale and Harvard. And my mother knew what an immense opportunity either of those schools represented for me. In those days it was way less expensive to go to Yale. That's the other thing, with loans, it was within our means without crippling, crippling loans. It was within our means. I mean, my freshman year at Yale, the total estimated cost of attendance all in was five grand, okay? And my father was an electrician. My father was not a highly paid person, but it was within the realm of possibility. So they did let me choose between Yale and Harvard. I got to pick, and I picked Yale for a couple of reasons. One of them is actually relevant to this discussion—the reason that I picked Yale is that after I was accepted, they recruited me. They put on a little bit of a rush: They threw a reception. They had the alumni in Baltimore and had a reception for admitted students. And they called me and they invited me and they said, "You know, we really want you to come and you can meet some current students and get a sense of what Yale is about. And do you need a ride? Someone will come pick you up." They seemed to have an actual interest in whether I came. Harvard just accepted me and then laid back and waited for me to say yes, but the real reason I think that I didn't go to Harvard was that in those days, if a woman went to Harvard, she didn't get a diploma that said, "Harvard." She got a diploma that said "Radcliffe." And I wanted a diploma that said the name of my institution on it. And I wanted – I knew that if I went to Yale – I would get a diploma that said "Yale" on it. And that ultimately was the, the factor that pushed me off the fence.
Shervin:
Oh …
Stephanie:
I mean, I don't, how old are you Shervin, 'cause I'm older than you and this is the way things were in the early '70s.
Shervin:
I'm 53. And when you talk about the '70s, you know, some of my fondest memories I grew up in New York, were my mom taking us to central park for N.O.W. protests. And seeing Betty Friedan or Kate Millett or Bella Abzug speaking. I was a child, as I'm understanding what you're describing here. Not only did they not court you to come and join them, but in fact, they made you well aware that there's just this bifurcation, there's just two classes, right? There're just two different environments physically, even in the articulation of the credential itself.
Stephanie:
Well, they didn't go out of their way to emphasize that in their materials, but it was something that if you paid attention, you knew you were being admitted to Radcliffe College. I say Harvard now because that's the way we all think about it. And even in those days, I thought about it that way. But the acceptance was to Radcliffe College, which had its own president. And the funny part is actually I sent back the material saying I wasn't coming. And that fall, I got a letter from Radcliffe welcoming me and inviting me to a reception for freshmen, you know? So I think Harvard, and they're Harvard, of course, they get the pick of the litter. Generally they get to lay back and assume that pretty much everyone they admit, it's their first choice. And, and that's the prerogative of being Harvard. I have to respect it. And college years are the time when you form the closest connections of your life, you form the most passionate friendships, the deepest rooted kinships of non-kin that you're ever gonna form in your life. It's a period of life. And also a set of experiences that really combine to create a kind of crucible that you all pass through together. And at the end of it you're bound together in ways that in some ways are stronger than blood. And so I know that if I had gone to Harvard, I would've made great friends just as I did at Yale. I mean, I met my husband at Yale. I might have met my husband at Harvard if I'd gone there, but I do have a strong, emotional connection to Yale because that's where I found so many of the people who are my tribe.
Shervin:
You know, I want to get into your experiences. You talked about what Harvard did with that follow up form letter, and it made me think of a tennis metaphor, an unforced error. And I want to get into tennis with you in a bit, but before we go there, I'm thinking about my daughter who is 19. She's a sophomore in Los Angeles right now, and if she were to listen to this to learn from you – and any other young women who are considering where to go to college or where to go to grad school, or whether or not they should even go to college – there's this big discussion now about, "Is the cost worth it?" Are there other paths, et cetera, and all of this, with the sort of the added tax on women, whether it's their physical safety or just going through the same education, but getting a different type of outcome. Whether it's through pay or all these things, obviously you've lived it. What sort of guidance could you provide?
Stephanie:
Oh, man, I'm not sure that I feel qualified to give advice to somebody who is young right now because they're having a whole different life experience already than I did. But the number one advice I give young people generally is relationship advice, which is to say that every person you ever date, every person who ever becomes your boyfriend or girlfriend or whatever, almost without exception, those people are gonna be exes. And when you are deciding whether to get into a relationship with someone, you need to think ahead to what kind of an ex- they're gonna be, because they might be more trouble than they're worth. And some of this is based on some experiences that I had a long time ago that we don't need to go into, but people who are excessively attached, excessively devoted people who can't live without you, all that stuff that can be seductive in the early days of a relationship, it can pull you in, even if you have some doubts. But oftentimes those people are terrible, terrible exes, really hard to get rid of. And some of them can be dangerous. And, you know, in my whole life, I tried never to date anyone that I didn't wanna be friends with. In fact, my husband and I were friends for six years before we became a couple. But even this particular ex- I'm thinking of was somebody that would've been an okay friend. It's just that I let him out of his corral. And, and that turned out to be a three year mistake on my part. But in general, I think that people—you I spend time on Quora. You've been on Quora. There's a lot of bashing of what they call the friend zone in social media, especially by young guys who have trouble getting laid. And what I try to say to people is the friendship of a person of the opposite sex is not honorable mention. It's not second place. The friendship of a person in the opposite sex is a gift. It is a prize in and of itself. It is not, second place. And if you don't want that friendship because there's something else you want, okay, but don't treat it like somebody has re-gifted you something that cost a dollar at the dollar store. It is a precious thing. And the very best relationships come out of friendship I feel. And the other thing is I really believe, and I've seen this a lot of someone's ability to extract the most benefit from their professional life comes from not being bitterly unhappy in their personal life. And I really believe that it's important to have a, a solid core understanding of who you are and what your standards are and what you will, and won't settle for my mother always used to say, and it's so interesting because my mother really wanted me to get married much younger than I did. She really wanted me to have babies and all that stuff, which I also didn't do. But she also said to me when I was a little girl, more than once, anybody can get married if they're willing to relax their standards far enough. And that's like maybe the truest thing my mother ever said to me. And so one of the things that I see young women doing, and it bugs the shit out of me is young women who feel like they have to have a boyfriend. They feel like if they don't have an attachment, there's something vital missing from their life. And I believe that being with the wrong person is a million times worse than being alone. I haven't spent a lot of my adult life unattached, but during the periods when I was unattached, I loved it. I enjoyed having that personal space. That was all mine. And I think that's one of the reasons that my husband and I are really good at having long distance or my, my husband and I have been long distance for probably a third of our time together. And I think one of the reasons that I fell easily into that is because I do feel very centered and at peace when I'm alone. I don't feel driven to fill that up with guys, just because I don't have a guy right now, does that make sense?
Shervin:
It does. And I'm also sort of thinking about the way the system works. I'm thinking about the patriarchy. It requires women to feel unhappy if they're alone, so that even the worst man will have a chance of to use your terms of getting laid, right? And I think we're seeing that play out now in sort of in these incel communities. It's not like third-order separated from violent extremism, we're seeing it actually. Andit's right there and it's right there. And you write extensively about all these topics to mention that you and I were both on Quora is a little bit like saying I played tennis. And so I belong on center court. You're a prolific writer and contributor for Quora. Back to this topic here: What is your view about how women knowingly or unknowingly uphold the system of patriarchy? Whether it's to protect someone and say, "Hey, if you lower your standards, by the way, you can get married too," which can be good advice. In some ways it can be protective in some ways, right? But we also see that many women benefit from patriarchy, right? They actually benefit from misogyny. And also we see that men are victims of the misogynistic system around them, too. How do you view these things?
Stephanie:
I think that men are equal victims of patriarchy with women. One of the things I have written about repeatedly on Quora, sometimes to the point where I feel like I wanna knock heads together is, don't you understand how bad patriarchy is for you? Mr. Whoever, why don't you see that a big chunk of your personal unhappiness comes from the fact that you are maybe not a perfectly round peg, but you're being shoehorned into a square hole because that's what patriarchy has in mind for you. I mean, I understand that patriarchy has been extremely functional over many generations and that many men extract quite a lot of benefit from it. And that's why it persists. But ultimately I really believe that it is invidious to all people. It's terrible for women, most women. Obviously not all women, you're right. Some women have forged a path that enables them to milk it for significant benefits. I think one of the reasons is that that people who are gay, people who are trans or intersex, have such a hard time, is that they're being rejected, they're being 360 degrees rejected by a patriarchal system, because if you're a straight, cis woman within patriarchy, at least you're supposed to have a sisterhood. And same for straight cis men, but people who are gender "outlaws" in whatever way are 360 degrees oppressed. That's beyond imoral, it's outrageous. Probably about 27 or 28 years ago, I was on jury duty and we had a lunch break and I stopped into a little bookstore that was near the courthouse. I bought a book called "Gender Outlaw" by Kate Bornstein. And I don't know if you're familiar with Kate, Kate's a trans woman who used to be a guy named Larry who worked for IBM, and Kate's book was a memoir of her life and transition and forging a new life. It absolutely blew scales off my eyes—I mean, I considered myself a progressive, open-minded person, but I'd never given much thought to the situation and lives of trans people. And one of the stories she tells in this book is working for IBM in Philadelphia during her transition They were in a big office building and one of the adjacent floors was presently vacant, being renovated for a new tenant. During her transition, she was made to go and use one of the bathrooms on that vacant floor because the men obviously didn't want her in the men's room, but the women didn't want her in the women's room. So she would take the elevator to whatever floor that was and go and use the sad, empty bathroom on this sad, empty floor. And, you know, you look at women like Phyllis Schlafly, or today women like Kayleigh McEnany or Candace Owens who have taken patriarchy, and even white supremacists structures. And here's Candace Owens who has taken white supremacy and put it to work for her. My hat is off to her in a way. I mean, it's relatively unusual for a black woman to find a way to make patriarchy and white supremacy pay the way she has. I guess that's a great tale of individual enterprise, but it's beyond horrifying. If you sit where I sit ,and I don't feel that all women are entitled to my support no matter what, but I do think that womanhood is entitled to my support no matter what. One of the things that troubles me most about these women and, I won't use the phrase gender traitors, because I don't like the phrase race traitors, and I feel like they're too etymologically related. But one of the things that bothers me about some of these women is the way they will sell out womanhood in general.
Shervin:
I would imagine TERFs are in that conversation too.
Stephanie:
I actually just added J.K. Rowling on Twitter for the first time the other day, because she finally posted something that was on top of all the other trans-exclusive stuff. She finally posted something that provoked me. Not that it matters that I added J.K. Rowling, but I couldn't help myself. She's never gonna see my comment, but I look at her and I think about how much I used to admire her. She used to be kind of an avatar of progressive Twitter. And then she went down this rabbit hole of anti-trans stuff and it's horrifying—it's horrifying. And I try to understand where she's coming from, but I, I can't get there.
Shervin:
Stephanie, I do wanna cover your experiences on the agency side of things. And specifically what I'm interested in is you dealt with professional athletes, people that were trying to monetize their value outside of their profession, their day gig. Did men and women in your experience conduct themselves differently or think of their self worth differently when it came to your line of work?
Stephanie:
Well, I was technically not myself an agent; I was legal counsel in a company that was full of agents. So my day-to-day life was mostly about advising people who were agents, and negotiating with shoe companies or whatever on behalf of those people. But I will say this: athletes as a group understand the number one thing, which is that they're all going to have very short careers and they understand that they need to be prepared to exploit as many opportunities as they can during the time when they are current, during the time when they're still at the top of their profession. But yes, there are certainly different standards for female versus male athletes. And I think the best example of that among the clients that we represented was Gabriela Sabatini. So Sabatini is beautiful. She's just a stunningly, beautiful woman and a great tennis player. And she wasn't quite in the category, commercially. She's a much better player than Kournikova, but she wasn't quite in Kournikova's league in terms of commercial appeal, even though she was a much better athlete than Kournikova, a much more successful athlete than Kournikova. Because Kournikova has the blonde hair, you know, which everybody wants the blonde hair. Sabatini is Argentinian. So she's dark. I mean, she's beautiful, she's got beautiful creamy skin, but dark hair, dark eyes, and that's a different thing. It's very commercial, but slightly less commercial. One of the things you can't help, but notice if you're working in the tennis industry during the '90s, is that an awful lot of opportunity landed much more forcefully on the doorsteps of the women who were beautiful. And for men, what mattered most was, you know, obviously were they winning and were they assholes. For the women, it was all really about how beautiful were they, how would they look, either wearing the product in an ad or holding the product in an ad or standing next to the product. But you know, that's just how life is. I don't mean to sound as if I embrace it. But none of that was surprising coming out of baseball into tennis. In baseball, an all-male sport, into tennis. No part of the difference between the way male tennis players are marketed and female tennis players are marketed, was shocking to anyone who had lived their life as a human being on Earth.
Shervin:
Which is fair. I totally can understand that. I guess that begs the question, "Beautiful by whose standards?" And there's no question about their beauty, at least in my eyes, especially Sabatini, but I'm just curious, how do we think about that in an increasingly diverse, connected, global existence?
Stephanie:
Well, there's no question that, I mean, and now we're going to overlay race on this, of course, but there's no question that Venus Williams didn't get – and Serena, to a lesser extent – over their careers, haven't gotten the kinds of ancillary commercial opportunities that Maria Sharapova got and Sharapova, Sharapova at least can stand next to them in terms of accomplishment, she's at their tier, as opposed to Kournikova, who's a couple tiers below. So I feel safer comparing Sharapova to the William sisters than, you know, Kournikova. I think that when you look at who is assessing the value of these women, the commercial value of these women is in endorsers. You're dealing with Madison Avenue primarily and middle of the road, white cis men's attitudes as to what is a beautiful woman. And I think Graf might have looked a little bit too intelligent—there's a fierce intelligence in her face. And that's not to say that those other women aren't intelligent, they're all intelligent, but there's a fierce intelligence in Steffi Graf's face that I think might have been a little off-putting to American advertisers. It doesn't seem to have put off the Germans.
Shervin:
You talk about male fragility and nothing makes a man squirm as much as a smart woman. I've actually seen that. Maybe some closing thoughts. I've really enjoyed our conversation and we haven't even talked enough about shoes—how many shoes do you own, do you think, do you have a rough number?
Stephanie:
I would estimate that it's somewhere around 5 to 600 pairs.
Shervin:
You estimate that it's between five to 600 jpairs. Okay.
Stephanie:
I've kind of lost control of inventory. I actually am going through a phase of getting rid of some of the ones I know I'm never gonna wear again. I have arthritis in my knees now, and as a result, I have some shoes that I really like as visual things, but that aren't well-qualified for me to wear going forward. And so with a certain amount of personal regret, I might be in the process of actually, you know, the Nike shoes, by Nike policy, as a retiree, I still have access to employee pricing, through the Nike online employee store and the in-person employee store. So I can't sell them, but what I can do is donate them, or give them away generally. So I'm probably gonna be giving away a certain number of pairs of Nikes. And some of my shoes that aren't Nikes are probably gonna end up on Poshmark.
Shervin:
There'll be some very happy people to receive your lovely gifts. You and I met online, and I'm very curious about your experiences as a woman being online. I think, as a man I have learned that I know nothing about what it's like to receive the level of vitriol and harassment and questioning your knowledge or authority or whatever. I've heard this from women. Could you share something that you've learned or some experiences that you think, maybe it's time for a change?
Stephanie:
I was really lucky in that I first got online in 1994 through The WELL. The WELL was the first virtual community online when Howard Rheingoldld wrote the book, The Virtual Community. Howard was writing about The WELL and The WELL started out as basically a dial-up BBS run out of Sausalito, California; it's now a corporation. I joined in 1994, when it was 10 years old. I had had a friend who was a member of The WELL and he had talked about it and it sounded kind of interesting. The WELL was great because although certainly there are jerks everywhere, the overall ethos of The WELL was extremely civil, civilized. People wrote in full sentences using proper punctuation. And there were a lot of people on the well who wrote for a living and other people who were just smart people who enjoyed hanging out online. I'm still a member of The WELL, all these years later, although I don't spend a ton of time over there. I haven't been in lately for a little while, but I'm still a member. I think The WELL raised my expectations of what it was gonna be like to be online. When Quora was new—I started using Quora in 2010, late 2010. I started reading Quora and I wrote my first answer anonymously in late 2010. And then I started getting more active in 2011 after I retired from Nike. And in those days, Quora was a lot like The WELL. It was mostly Silicon Valley, early adopters. It was small. There was a feeling of community about it. There was a feeling about it. And in those days, Quora had a real name policy, and there was a feeling about it of general trustworthiness. And there were men who tried to mansplain. There were men who were overtly hostile if you disagreed with them with a female name. And also there were men who just assumed I was a man because of the way I expressed myself and referred to me as he, until some other person corrected them. So I would say the first four or five years I was on Quora was a pretty positive place for me. It started to change—so in 2011 when they launched the Android app, it brought in a huge influx of users from South Asia, which changed—most of them were very polite. It wasn't like that changed, but the Android app above and beyond all the users from South Asia brought in a lot of Americans and other people. And as it grew, 'cause obviously if you're Quora you have to grow or die, right? So it just grew and grew and grew and it prioritized growth, which they had to do. When the 2016 election rolled around, things got pretty bad and all through the Trump administration—the 2012 election was contested on Quora, mostly not in an impolite way. By 2016, things had gotten really bad and the last few years have been just hellacious. I estimate that I block and mute at least 10 to 20 people every day.
Wow.
And you know, and I, the first couple years I was on Quora, I never blocked anyone. I had kind of a feeling of pride about it. And then one day Marc Bodnick said to me, "You don't understand, we want you to block people because blocking people will keep Quora a positive experience for you and it's a tool that we give you to allow you to groom Quora into the kind of place where you want to spend time." So I thought, well, actually that makes sense. So then I started blocking people like a fiend. Some days I block a dozen people before breakfast. So it's just a matter of if I see somebody comment on somebody else's content in a way that I don't like, I feel like I will never have a constructive engagement with this person. I just block them preemptively. I've blocked thousands of users that I have never had any personal interaction with because I don't want to have personal interaction with them. And so as a result of that, for me, Quora is still largely a fairly positive experience, but I've probably blocked 10,000 to 15,000 active users.
Shervin:
That's stunning, and it shows something I've heard from women – including through this project – about the additional burden placed on women to create something that's not even equal, but closer to equal to what men experience, right? Wow. If I ever get blocked by you, then I'll know.
Stephanie:
No, I promise you are not the sort of person who will ever do anything that will provoke you. But I want to say one other thing, because we've talked a lot about life online and so forth and male fragility. But I want to say just one other thing, or maybe one or two other things, about misogyny in the world. And I feel like it needs to be said because you're only seeing me from the shoulders up. But I have gone through my life as an overweight woman. When I was younger, I was thinner. I mean, I'm not like, you know—I can sit on an airplane, you know what I mean? But I've gone through my life as an overweight woman. And one of the things that I think is interesting about that is that I feel as if it has exempted me from some of the worst excesses of male chauvinism and sexism over time—an overweight fat woman is an affront to the patriarchy. She's an affront to sexism because she is a woman who by her very presence is signaling to men that she is not motivated enough by desire for their regard to groom herself into a person that they will find attractive. That's not the way I thought about it, mainly it's just that I enjoy eating and I don't enjoy exercise enough to be very different from what I am. But I do believe that one of the through threads of my career has been that I have never really felt myself in a target of any kind of sexual harassment. And that's entirely different from the life experiences of most women in these work environments that I've been in. I have seen things said to young women that were utterly horrifying and some of these young women have come to me and said, you're not gonna believe what so-and-so said to me. And none of those things, things like that, were ever said to me. I'm not sorry, you know, like it's not something I regret looking back thinking, damn, if I'd been more sexually alluring when I worked at Major League Baseball, maybe so-and-so would've said something like that to me. That's not something that I feel I missed out on, but I do think it has colored my experience of both sexism and misogyny. I went through life as a woman who went to Yale. So I was sort of a notoriously smart person in the places where I've worked and I was fat or overweight depending on what stage of my life it was. So I don't think that it's been a huge factor, but as I look back, and even just thinking about it in preparation for this conversation, I thought, you know, I feel like that's an element of life experience that doesn't necessarily get talked about a lot, but which when I compare the things that have happened to me, and I mean, I've gone through periods where I found out after I left the job that the guy who had the same title I had was making twice as much money. I had an experience: I went on a recruiting trip once where the two men, senior executives of the company that brought me on the recruiting trip, were trying to recruit a baseball player and I knew more about baseball than they did. While we were waiting for the athlete and his family to show up, the two of them launched into a conversation about recent Playboy centerfolds, and started to discuss in clinical detail, the relative merits, body parts, and hotness of these recent Playboy centerfolds. And here I am sitting in this hotel suite with them and they're having this conversation and I'm sitting there thinking, okay, this is a test. How do I respond to this provocation? I need to say or do something, but I have to figure something out. So then I remembered – this is kind of funny in light of our earlier discussion – I remembered this was about 1991 or '92. Maybe I had heard that there had been a trans woman Playboy center fold not long before. And so there was a pause in their discussion. And I said, "Hey, didn't I read about a trans woman being in the centerfold a few months ago?" And one of them said, "No, that's impossible." And the other guy said, "No, no. Remember it was Miss So-and-So and, you know, remember those giant, you know?" And I was like, okay, this didn't work. But it was, I thought I needed a segue. It was the only segue I could think of; it failed utterly.
Shervin:
Well thinking on your feet. I mean, yeah.
Stephanie:
So when I got back to the office, I went to my boss and I said, "I'm gonna tell you a story. And I want you to promise that you won't do anything about it." He said, "I'm not sure I can promise that." I said, "You gotta promise me you won't do anything about it." He said, yes. So I told him the story and his eyes got like saucers. I mean, just big blue saucers. And he said to me, "Okay, you have my word. I won't do anything about it, but why are you telling me this, if you don't want me to do anything about it?" I said, "I'm telling you because the next time a woman comes to you and tells you a story like this, I want you to believe her. So the fact that they don't do it in front of you doesn't mean that it doesn't happen." And he looked at me and he said, okay, that's fair. That's fair. And I said, "You know, you trust me, right? You believe me?" He said, "I absolutely believe you." I said, "Okay. So the next time you hear a story like this from somebody else, believe her, because I'm here to tell you it happened to me, it's happening to other people, something like this. It may not be the exact same thing. Something like this is happening to, to other people." And I feel as if I could strike a tiny little blow for "just believe women", that was a good day's work.
Shervin:
How fitting to close our segment with that. You've done more than one blow against the patriarchy. I'm so grateful for our new friendship and your invitation for me to come to Portland and for us to go visit the Nike store.
Stephanie:
I will take you to the Nike Employee Store. You'll see.
Shervin:
Admittedly, I'm a little bit more Adidas than Nike, but I've never felt totally drawn in by the wonderful shoes that you've shared. But more importantly, what you had to share with me in the stories and in your history and the lessons from that, and the inspiration for myself and my daughter and anyone else listening to this. Thank you. Thank you for being generous and vulnerable and open. I'm so grateful to you. Thank you for your time.
Stephanie:
Thank you, Shervin. I didn't know what to expect coming in. I looked at the transcripts of some of your other conversations with people, but still when it's you, you never know what to expect. And thank you for your level of preparation and your sensitivity and your openness to the stories.
Shervin:
Thank you.