We like to finish every episode of the podcast by asking our guest to complete the sentence, “If I Had Been Born A Girl…” Some guests do just that. Others provide much lengthier responses. We’ll be posting every response in text format here. We also hope that people will start posting their own statements on social media, using the hashtag #ifihadbeenbornagirl – or, for that matter, the tag #ifihadbeenbornaboy – and we’ll be looking to add the best examples we find to this page.
“#IfIHadBeenBornAGirl… no one would know my name. I don’t think the world could get past my idiosyncrasies. I don’t think the world could get past who I am. Isn’t that crazy? It’s crazy to me. You sort of think of it both ways. There’s this thing in psychology called the survivorship bias, which is our tendency to focus on people who make it through the process and forget about the people who didn’t. And so, you know, it’s easy to look at all of the women that made it, but man – think about all the women that didn’t. Right? Somewhere out there, there’s some genius behavioral scientist woman who doesn’t have the standing that she should because she’s a woman. And think about how much more enriched we’d be as a culture if she did! Instead, you’re stuck with me. What a terrible place to be!”
“#IfIHadBeenBornAGirl… I would be a far more resilient person than the old, white man that I am today. Having achieved what I wanted to achieve without the huge step up afforded to me by the privilege of being white, male, and born with a great passport – I would be a much more resilient person today. I would have to be.”
“#IfIHadBeenBornAGirl… I think I would have found life more challenging than
I’ve found it as a man. Probably. Certainly.”
“#IfIHadBeenBornAGirl… I would have gone to university. One thing that’s worth remembering is that I come from a family that was unbelievably well-educated and in which the women were as well-educated as the men. My great aunt got a first in French at the University of London in about 1913. My grandmother was a graduate of the University of Wales. My aunt was an architect, she was the first female to get a degree in architecture at the University of Wales. So, we clearly had a family that was a bit matriarchal. Looking at that family background, had I been a girl I would have gone to university. Would I have gone into advertising? Crikey! What else might have snared me? Being a bit of a games theorist, I would have done science at university – because I would have been at a girls’ school, instead of a boys’ school, and I would have said OK, if loads of girls are doing bloody history and so on, I’m going to go and do maths and science. To be honest, looking at family history, I probably would have ended up doing medicine, actually. I think what I would have done is I would have probably been a GP. Or would I have become a lawyer? The one thing I think I would have done is I would have done something more conventional.”
“#IfIHadBeenBornAGirl… I would be really angry. I would be pissed. Today more so than ever, because I think that what’s happening now is there is this increased awareness and increased vocalisation of some of the things that are happening and I still think that there are things in our society that – they piss me off, you know. Whether it’s the messages that the media continuously sends out; whether it’s some of the rules and regulations, some of the laws; whether it’s some of the opportunities that are not afforded to me as a girl – I would be pissed. I would feel that my fellow humans of the other gender have really done me wrong, historically, and continue to do so – and that’s not acceptable.”
“#IfIHadBeenBornAGirl… I would have loved to have been like my mother.”
“#IfIHadBeenBornAGirl… I like to think that I would have had a wonderful and rich life, as I have had. I’m almost sure there are ways in which it would have been more difficult and more frustrating – and that I would have had more bullshit to deal with than I have to deal with as a man.”
“#IfIHadBeenBornAGirl… First of all, I would love to try it – life as a girl. This is probably the most exciting ride you can offer me – to try this again, as a girl. I think I would feel extremely comfortable in my skin. I don’t know if the world would be more accessible or less – I think more. I don’t know why, but I look at women in a general way, and they look so powerful to me. Maybe it’s all in my head. Maybe it’s because I didn’t experience first-hand the hardships of being a woman. But I see the way the women around me – from my survivor mother, to my first wife raising the kids while studying, to my wife now who is Dutch and has been living for ten years in Israel in a completely different culture and coping so well – and, you know, it’s admirable. Yeah, I’d like to try it once myself. Can you arrange that?”
“#IfIHadBeenBornAGirl… I hope I would have still gone into the Navy and still served my country. I think that that probably would not have been the case. But I do hope. And I look at my wife every day and think, “God! Would I have been her? Could I have been her and done what she did?” And I hope – and that’s the optimist in me, hoping that I would have done – I would have continued on to do that. And again, having a really strong female role model with my mother to push that forward, I hope that would have happened.”
“#IfIHadBeenBornABoy… I would like to believe that I would have been a ‘femanist’, as I call it; that I would see the benefits of equality and diversity to my business and to the world; and that I would be aware of my own status as the goldfish in the bowl, and I would work hard to make the water as comfortable and welcoming to girls and boys as possible.”
“#IfIHadBeenBornAGirl… I would not have had the life that I had. It’s as simple as that. I would not have had the life that I had. I’d probably be a lawyer somewhere in Christchurch, New Zealand. A bleak thought when you put it like that!”
