05/18/2026
You know the remarks are wrong. You've read the history, done the thinking and been angry for years. And then one afternoon you don't get the job or the recognition and the first thought in your head, before you can stop it, is that maybe the remarks were right about you after all. About you, specifically. That's the suspicion Marilyn French is talking about in The Women's Room. It makes you sicker than the original contempt, because the contempt came from outside and this time the suspicion feels like your own judgment.
French wrote The Women's Room in 1977. Her rage is at the structures, at centuries of men being told they were the standard while women were told they were the deviation. But "sneaking suspicion" is the phrase you remember from this passage. And then the word "all." All of whom. French describes magnificent women, sharper and more capable than the “rotten” men near them, and every one of those women carries the suspicion. The woman who runs the department has it. The woman who's been right about everything for twenty years has it. And each of those women thinks she's the only one, because the women around her look like they don't carry suspicion either, and nobody mentions it. The anger about the four thousand years is something you can share. The suspicion about yourself you keep to yourself.
You'd think that knowing would help. You've read Sandra Lee Bartky on how the shame gets into the body as a feeling, long before you're old enough to argue with it. You understand that the suspicion is structural and has nothing to do with whether you're actually good enough. You'd think all of that would make a difference. And it does, in your head. You can explain it, teach it and see it happening in real time. And then Monday morning comes and you add the qualifier anyway, "I might be wrong about this," in front of your own expertise, in a room where you know more than anyone else at the table, because the shame doesn't answer to the knowing. You've read and understood everything. And you still add the qualifier.
And the world rewards the qualifier. French is “sick unto death”, and I think this is partly why. Pierre Bourdieu had a term for this, symbolic violence, the way the powerful set the terms and then everyone else judges themselves by those terms. You can see it in any appraisal. The woman who adds "I might be wrong" gets described as thoughtful and collaborative. The woman who doesn't gets described as difficult. The world put the doubt there and rewards the doubt. And the world gets the benefit of everything the doubt produces, the extra hours you worked and the way you made yourself twice as good because you never quite trusted that good enough would be enough for someone like you. And then you're told the remarks were wrong all along, and you're supposed to believe that over the evidence of your whole working life.
How many more decades do you have to know the remarks are wrong before you stop feeling like they might be right? French wrote this nearly fifty years ago. The remarks have changed form since then but the structures underneath them haven't moved as far as the language has. You still catch yourself wondering whether you really earned it. The magnificent women are still carrying the suspicion, every one of them, and the rotten men still don't have to. You know the remarks are wrong. You've always known. You go back and check your work anyway.
© Echoes of Women - Fiona.F, 2026. All rights reserved
Image: MaryMotleyKalergisPhotography
