After a judge posted about how her child's school rang her during work hours despite strict instructions not to, a random dude tried to explain how she should have just picked up the call.
Findings from extensive research have shown us that women perform much if not all of the unpaid labor at home, which constitutes the "second shift." This includes child care. Taking to Twitter, judge and mother Lucy Greenwood shared how the responsibilities of child care interrupted her during her work hours at court. Almost immediately, a fellow Twitter user claimed to know how phone use etiquette worked in court. Unaware she was a judge herself, he said a judge would give any lawyer five minutes to pick up an urgent call. Of course, Greenwood had the perfect response: "I was the judge."
Greenwood initially posted, "Yesterday [my] daughter [was] ill at school. [She said], 'Don’t ring my mom, she is in hearing and won’t pick up, please ring my dad.'" Her instructions were indeed clear and concise, anyone would have been able to follow them. Unfortunately, we live in a deeply patriarchal world where simple instructions, too, are affected by our biases. So what does her daughter's school do? As she shared: "School rings me." The tweet included the hashtag #BreakTheBias, an initiative to challenge the sexist norms we have sadly become accustomed to within our communities and in our relationships.
In response, a Twitter user decided he knew better than Greenwood. "If my kids' school called me whilst I was at work, I would know there is a problem and would answer the phone. End of," he replied. "[I] don't understand why this is an issue at all. Priorities." Others, also men, stepped in to clarify that this would simply not be possible as no judge would allow it. For instance, one Twitter user responded, "Not everyone has your job. Lawyers in a trial can’t just say, 'Excuse me, judge, I gotta take this call.' Doctors in surgery don’t even have their phones on them I’d bet."
He shoots, he misses and he continues to assert nonsense.
— TheAspiLawStudent #NoReturns (@LawAspi) March 8, 2022
Clearly you know very little of how our courts operate and what would happen if you said to a judge "can I just have two mins, my child's school is calling".. You'd be scolded by the judge (rightly or wrongly)
"It’s very true," another added. "You aren’t actually allowed a phone on in court, full stop. It’s mainly to stop Interruptions and to prevent recordings, but I dare you to take a phone [to] court and ask a judge to delay a hearing when someone calls you if you don’t believe me." These responses got him all fired up. In his concluding statements (before he was torn to shreds), he questioned, "So if I looked at my phone and saw a missed call from my kids' school and asked the judge for five minutes to call back, he or she would say no and bollock me, would they?"
And then came the perfect retort from Greenwood, who wrote: "I was the judge." It is, of course, an absolute mystery how the Twitter user has not just deleted his account. Indeed, one user noted, "Aside from this perfect closer, my next favorite part of this thread is that he's not embarrassed enough to take down his responses." If anything, his response is an indication of why a hashtag like #BreakTheBias is still necessary in this day and age, as sad as that may be.