About a decade or so ago, I became aware of the criticism that women seemed to apologize for their presence in the world, for having opinions, for taking up space, for deigning to contribute. This was right around the same time conversations arose about women ending declarative sentences like questions, and the observations about this phenomenon continue today. Ask Amy Schumer, she knows.
Recently, however, the tone of those observations has begun to change. Instead of pitching advice to women (it’s nearly always about women) to change the way they speak, researchers, linguists and the media have begun to advise the advisors to stop telling women to stop apologizing. The reason? Singling out apologizing as a way women limit themselves and criticising women alone for the behavior can be perceived as inherently anti-feminist, something more akin to shame than empowerment. Not only because it singles women out, but also because it creates a value difference between what could be considered a “masculine” versus “feminine” styles of communication, in that the feminine is essentially wrong.
But on top of that, as Jessica Grose highlights in her article about an app that helps eliminate words like sorry from women’s emails, blanket proclamations like “don’t apologize” also denies the contextual subtlety of language. Sometimes sorry isn’t an apology, but a way to ease through a difficult conversation, Grose (citing the work of linguist Deborah Tannen) points out.
To apologize or not to apologize or to apologize for apologizing?
As a coach and mentor, I’ll frequently insist that the leaders I work with stop apologizing in certain contexts. This is as much an act of feminism as of effectiveness.
For example, I worked with a woman who was facing a challenging relationship with a peer. She wanted to improve the tone of their conversations, and so frequently apologized for transgressions she wasn’t actually committing. In that case, I advised her to stop apologizing because it was emphasizing her peer’s aggression and egging it on, and to instead skip right over the drama and address the work at hand.
Was her initial need to apologize to a bully a response that was made more likely due to patriarchy? Well, I tend to think so, at least in part. But, she’s also a genuinely warm and empathic person who craves peace over conflict, which is a lovely kind of person to be. Simply saying “don’t apologize!” wouldn’t have been the most empowering way for her to overcome that ingrained limiting behavior. We started there, but also worked on finding ways for her to head off the challenging behavior by recognizing her role as a leader and expert herself, and projecting that expertise to the team in a way that honored who she was.
It was more empowering for her to find a way to balance her gentleness with authority, than to tell her that she had to choose between one or the other. A generic, gender-based language rule would not have sufficed.
True apologies for true wrongs can be beautiful and healing statements. Using sorry as a bridge to change a conversation from combative to effective can be a powerful use of language. Apologizing for sharing an opinion you truly believe in could be contributing to a slow chipping away of your confidence. So, the real trouble with saying, or not saying, sorry, isn’t in the act itself, it’s in the intent, the context, and most important, in how it makes the sayer (or not sayer) feel. It can and should be an authentic expression of a part of yourself.