When Gratitude is Used as a Weapon by Patriarchy

There’s a difference between helpful and harmful gratitude

My first “real” job after college was at the Carmel Pine Cone (cute name, right?), a very small newspaper in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California. I was hired as one of three reporters at a salary of $13,000. In today’s dollars, that would be about $21,000—in a town where the median home price is $1.4 million.

Three weeks after starting the job, the other reporters were fired and my male boss told me I’d now be doing all the work…without a raise.