Emily note: I am so excited to share this conversation with you, because Tammy is fun people. Here goes…
What’s your name?
Tammy Hale
How do you identify?
Cis, heteroflexible, she/her pronouns
What brings you joy in life?
Tammy: Being seen and loved for who I am by people whom I see and love. Also, food, sex, working on a project, and my kid.
Emily: YES. All of those things are amazing. I agree with all of your variables listed above, although who the fuck cares if I agree? This post is about you.
You and I really developed our friendship over Facebook (even though we met in person), which is why I can’t get rid of the app even though I hate Zuckerbutt. Facebook brings me friends and joy.
Tammy: Agreed. My closest friends now are people I originally met on FB who became friends IRL, or whom I already knew but discovered I vibed with on FB, and then started hanging out more in person. I feel sorry for people who think FB is no fun because they obviously made the mistake of friending their dumb co-workers, toxic neighbors, and oblivious family members. You can shake and stir those adjectives and nouns, btw. I wouldn’t enjoy it either if I had to be the sanitized-for-polite-society Tammy.
Emily: Yes! I recently had a conversation with my therapist about all of the social media platforms, and how I rank FB #1 simply because it’s where I go every day to laugh with my people. Tik Tok just isn’t that “sticky” for me, even though I love the hell out of it, and trade Tik Toks on the daily with our mutual friend Janice. I could walk away from Tik Tok forever, and I wouldn’t cry. I would cry over FB because of all of you who are there.
Anyhoo – I feel as if you are your own harshest critic. WHY?
Tammy: I think most of us are. For me, the reason is my internal monologue was formed by an angry dad voice and an angry God voice, which is close to a single Venn diagram circle. I have healed in a lot of ways WRT this issue, but it’s still a problem because how can you not be critical of a shit show like me?
Emily: That is what kills me – YOU ARE NOT A SHIT SHOW. We are all flawed and frankly I am not overly critical of myself. Ha! That sounds awful. I mean, I know I am not perfect, but I also have zero problem shaping my worldview so I look like a shiny star.
Tammy: I love this about you and it’s all that much more impressive knowing you came to this yourself and not because you had stellar parenting. I also know I’m no more of a shit show than anyone else, but that’s not what the voices say. 😉
THE VOICE WITHIN?
Can we talk about the dad and God voices in your head? What do they say, and why the hell are they male?
Tammy: Definitely male, although I’d never actually thought about it before now. I’m guessing they are male because I was raised with a male god and my dad was obviously male. As to what they say, it’s a lot of internalized misogyny that I don’t consciously believe and which would sound ridiculous if I said it out loud.
Some of it has to do with how I’m a liar (even when I’m not lying), that I’m a very very bad person who doesn’t deserve anything, that I’m trying to get away with something and I’m going to get caught, that men really are smarter and better than I am and that I’m illegitimately forcing my way into their spaces.
<Emily note: deep breath>
And… that I should be obedient and servile, that I have no right to my own sacrilegious feelings and opinions, that the needs of my body are inconvenient and distasteful to others… basically a whole lot of bullshit that I rail against out loud and have spent decades trying to counter, temper, and heal. I have come a very long fucking way. But it’s still the emotional air I breathe.
Emily: The men in your head are shitty. My inner monolog is in my own voice, either singing some song lyric repeatedly, or talking myself up (you CAN ‘get there’ Emily, just relax bitch!), or counting. I count sometimes when I’m doing something hard – like climbing stairs or carrying something heavy or whatnot. I feel like I can’t be the only person on the planet who does this.
Tammy: That’s a beautiful and honest interior voice. I hope more people have that kind of voice than don’t.
One of my favorite topics, books!
So we met in a book club. I want to know…
Favorite book:
Tammy: I dunno. I majored in English Lit so I should have an answer to this but for 30 years I’ve been stumped. Sometimes I virtue signal with my answer. Sometimes I choose a book I like a lot that I’ve read recently.
Emily: I think a lot of people virtue signal with their book answers, and *maybe even* with their reading choices. I swear this is why some people don’t like to read – they are trying to read all of the heavy, important shit. I am only slightly embarrassed of my love of a good romance novel, or how I am a sucker for a self help book. The really heavy shit is hard to get through sometimes, even for the most dedicated reader.
Tammy: You should read whatever you enjoy and fuck people if they look down their noses at it.
Emily: <nods head in agreement but no one can see it because I’m sitting on my fucking couch>
Tammy: I used to be really repulsed by romance novels until I realized it’s mostly women enjoying a world where men respect and value women for all that they are, plus a lot of amazing sex. It’s the fairy tale we were all raised to believe would come true if we were the right kind of woman and that we are shamed as adults for wanting. It’s sexist horseshit to tell women that a pleasurable read is garbage because it satisfies the wants sexism gave us.
In fact, if anyone gives you crap about it, feel free to tell them your friend who graduated Magna Cum Laude with a degree in English Literature says their opinion is misogynist, gatekeeping bullshit and that they should go fuck themselves instead of trying to shit on your pleasure.
Emily: Ha!
Tammy: Of course, romance novels are formulaic and not noted for lyrical prose, and that is ok because they are meant to be an escape and not a challenge. There’s nothing wrong with leaving the Gravity’s Rainbow, Infinite Jest, and Ulysses type novels to the career book humpers. At the same time, I believe you can have quality without it being heavy. (Note that I would love to be a career book humper.)
Emily: CAREER BOOK HUMPERS! Haha, I thought that was a joke about romance novel readers and the leagues of women who are getting turned on by their literature, which is ALSO true.
Favorite author:
Tammy: Today I’m going to say NK Jemisin or Octavia Butler, authors of books I have read recently like I mentioned above. But in all sincerity, I’ve been immersing myself in black women writers for the past couple of years because there’s this massive fucking trove of amazing literature I’ve overlooked. Like, I started the journey to be less of an asshole and expand my personal canon and along the way found these books to be nourishing, absorbing, and deeply entertaining.
Emily: I listened to The City We Became by NK Jemisin because of you, and it was glorious. Not my usual style of book, but wow.
And she codes, too.
One loop back from above, I didn’t know you majored in English Lit. What did you intend to do with that major, or did you know? Aren’t you a software developer? How the hell did you get there?
Tammy: After I graduated with my BA in English Lit, I discovered there weren’t a wealth of jobs for liberal arts majors. I got a job as a technical writer at a software company and quickly realized that the best tech writer was never going to make as much money as the crappiest software developer. I figured I could be a crappy software developer–and it’s not like I had some great love of technical writing–and software jobs were plentiful.
So I went back to school and studied computer science. I never actually got the CS degree, though, so I do struggle with imposter syndrome (see also: the asshole voices in my head above), even though I have over 20 years in the field. FWIW, I turned out to be a good software developer instead of my modest goal of being a crappy one.
As to what I intended to do with an English degree, I don’t really know. My parents didn’t go to college and always told me I just needed a degree, it didn’t matter what the degree was in. Which is kind of true after a certain point, but an English degree is certainly not a fast track to wealth for a new graduate.
Emily: I didn’t know any of that about you, and it’s very cool. It was the same for me – I was a music major (worse than English Lit) who spent my senior year working in the Dean’s office at my college, and really liked college administration. I ended up working in college admissions, and someone’s mom suggested I consider a career in HR. I knew I would never make much money as an admissions officer, so I immediately jumped into a job search. The rest is history – I worked myself up the HR chain the old fashioned way, which is to say, I sucked a lot of d**ks.
Anything else? Other topics you’d like to jump into?
Tammy: I’m so jealous of how hot you are. Like, not just surface-level hot, but deeply hot. That’s undeniably a suck up, but it’s also very fucking true.
Emily: Oh my, well, thank you. If I had a body like yours (note readers – artists would kill to paint naked Tammy, don’t ask me how I know this), and a few of your other talents (that I probably can’t talk about because your kid may read this), I would be a lucky woman.
Tammy: Thank you! You ARE a lucky woman. More of our conversations should focus on how hot we are. Lol
Emily: PREACH.