the fetish for discretion
an introductory guide to patience, positioning, and perception management
“who, me?”
i have been consistent in my insistence that power is not a young woman’s game. this goes against convention; the feminist ideal that the future is female. but that’s only if you believe that power is found in noticeable strength as opposed to the ability to move with ease.
in their examination of power, what people often get wrong is their focus on who, or what, they can see. what this sample size does is limit one’s analysis to only that which is on the surface, without bothering to look beneath.
as they say, the devil is in the details.
it’s this lack of a nuanced pursuit of the truth that contributes to the crisis of our times; that being the need for external validation. the need for other people to tell us exactly who we are; or, even worse, confirm it for us.
that which is true, is true no matter what.
that which is real is dependent on a reality that can either be affirmed or denied.
the difference is a function of who’s in charge.
power lets you determine reality. being anchored in yourself allows you to exist in all dimensions. thus, identity becomes meaningless as your essence remains regardless of prevailing paradigms.
that said, very few are legitimately anchored in who they are.
that’s just a sign of the times.
thus, to obtain power as young women, it’s not about shattering glass ceilings or beating men at their own game. no, our mandate is to become agents who can operate within any system with finesse, with cunning, and with a ruthlessness that makes our individual agendas inevitable. that sort of power play, when done well, is rarely recognizable. and that’s the point.
“the the meek…will inherit the land and enjoy peace and prosperity.”
but if you spend all your time announcing your ascendancy. making faustian deals for attention. and getting stuck in the tactical hell that are patriarchal power plays then you’ll miss the forest for the trees. better put, you’ll be taken out of the game long before you’ve had a chance to find your footing, secure your allies, and quietly consolidate power.
power may not be a young woman’s game, but playing coy is.
“let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.”
it’s often said that the god of war hates those who hesitate. and as fortunate favors the bold, the gods tend to reward those who move with certainty and urgency.
but then again, without an understanding of the board we’re playing on, moving fast and breaking things is seldom a winning strategy. no matter how much it looks like we’re making progress.
instead, our focus, in any endeavor, must always be situational awareness. understanding the players, their roles, their blindspots, their obsessions, and most importantly, what it is they actually want. and then leveraging this information for our benefit.
i began to speak on this in my essay, “before the year is over, advocate for yourself”:
“there’s an idiom about when you’re speaking with someone and they bring up an irrelevant point, likely to deter the conversation, you’re suppose to ask them, “what does that have to do with the price of tea in china?”
it’s a playful way to get them back on track.
but i honestly believe that we should all be concerned about the price of tea in china. meaning, we should all be aware of the biases that people hold, the narrative threads they’re concerned with, and the tangents they’re prone to go on because this means that we’re paying attention to them. and that level of fact gathering will only help us in dealing with them.”
life is a fact-finding mission. the more you know, the more you are able to tailor yourself, your plans, and whatever else is necessary to achieve your aims. i call this the art of institutional extraction, and it’s something i learned while at harvard.
during my time at the college, i understood that the institution cared about certain things more than others. even though it said it cared about all things. i also understood that there were pockets of grant money ready to finance my academic dreams. thus, my receiving that money and getting sponsored, as it were, was a function of me positioning what i wanted to do with what the institution actually cared about. daddy harvard was always generous if it felt its progeny was carrying on its legacy.
the game is the game.
outside of the tactics of actually getting what you want; this question of positioning and emotional intelligence; there's a strategy that borders onto the sublime.
as i wrote earlier in this essay, the crisis of our times is external validation. people do not feel they are who they say they are if no one else believes it too. thus, people leave themselves vulnerable to the whims and opinions of those who may care for their heart, but not for its beating.1
we must view this idea that the vast majority of people do not care, nor think, about us in any meaningful way through a positive lens, not a normative one.
it may seem cruel, this apathy towards the suffering of one’s fellow man. and it is cruel. in a normative sense. but we cannot combat what we cannot see, nor can we defeat an enemy we do not know.
but our fellow man is not our enemy. they just don’t always happen to be our friends.
remember, there are no friends, only aligned interests.2
thus, we must be obsessed with understanding the players, their roles, their blindspots, their obsessions, and most importantly, what it is they actually want. we must have an intuitive sense of the institution that we’re navigating if we are to become agents who can operate within any system with finesse, with cunning, and with a ruthlessness that makes our individual agendas inevitable.
it’s not about us, and how we feel; it’s always about them and what they want. not what they need, but what they want.
it may seem counterintuitive to prioritize the wants of others above our own; and it some cases it is; but if you’re tasked with navigating an institutional, hierarchical setting in which you are young, either in the context of age or tenure, then it behooves to you to move in a seemingly deferential manner.
and you do this by always keeping the spotlight on other people, and rarely yourself.
why?
because no one can harm what they cannot see. no one can take out whom they do not perceive as a threat. and no one can stop the momentum of someone who has made herself instrumental to the success of what the institution actually wants.
in this game, privacy does not become a tactic of withholding information. it becomes a tool to navigate the board with finesse, with cunning, and with a ruthlessness that makes our individual agendas inevitable.
do not believe that the spirit of ruthlessness is a marker of wanting to do harm to others. some take it way, but diouana woman understand that ruthlessness, like all things, is a matter of faith:
“people don’t understand the word ruthless. they think it means ‘mean.’ it’s not about being mean. it’s about seeing the bright, clear line that leads from a to b. the line that goes from motive to means. beginning to end. it’s about seeing that bright, clear line and not caring about anything but the beautiful fact that you can see the solution. not caring about anything else but the perfection of it.”3
when you see yourself at the top, you do not need others to believe it for you. when you see yourself having a seat at the table, you do not need others to believe that for you.
what you need from them is to get out of your way long enough to achieve your aims. some might even give you a helping hand. and if you really know what you’re doing, you won’t even need to ask.
so, do not worry if people do not believe you to be talented, worthy, deserving, or beautiful. none of these things matter, they’re simply labels. descriptors. concern yourself with your ability to position yourself in such a way that others, though their own actions, end up giving you exactly what is it you want; even if, on the surface, all you did, was give them what they needed.
it’s a fair exchange.
this is not meant to be transactional. it’s meant to be liminal.
it’s the weaponization of patience as a strategic force. it’s the understanding that meekness allows you to be invisible long enough to consolidate the power you’ll need to actually do what you want. this is humility as political strategy.
it’s enduring. it’s eternal. and it requires an endurance only found in those with the highest levels of faith.
power may not be a young woman’s game, but potential is.
“do you understand the violence it took to become this gentle?”
i have a treatise; that social media, the narcissism its discourse spawned, and the omnipresence of surveillance technology have rendered us all cam girls. forever performing an aesthetic for an adoring audience.
this nomenclature of mine was the title of one of my earlier works on this substack: “the cam girl of my dreams.” in it, i wrote:
“there are many who decry that to live in fantasy is a fool’s errands. we, few but proud, diouana women, know that fantasy is fantasy. it exists in the realm where greek nymphs, french courtesans, and biblical whores attend dinner parties where each share their wretched experience existing in the human plane with mortal men.
it’s a curious thing, existing as a real life fantasy. the objectification of one’s essence into a pedestrian dichotomy of madonna-whore. there comes a time when the reality of the situation sinks in. that, to them, you are not a person; you are a moodboard for them to displace their hopes onto. you become a walking id of their repressed desires. in this context, there’s a politeness in giving people exactly what they want. in living up to their fantasy. too bad it’s often the case they’ll end up hating you for it.
however, there is a trick to hatred that few know. there are certain agent provocateurs and long-dead alchemists whose lives have been defined by their mastery of this trick. just for you, i’ll let you in on the secret: all emotion, and especially hatred, is potential energy. in the first law of thermodynamics, it is understood that energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be converted from one form to another. in taking the hatred those who fantasize about us leave at our altars when we do not live up to their agenda, we can transform their potential energy into our kinetic energy. thus, taking back our power. after all, power is power.”
in the “power is power” ending line, i linked an exchange between littlefinger and cersei because it underscored the difference between knowledge as information, that being potential energy, and power as institutional, that being kinetic energy:
“cersei [touching littlefinger’s sigil]: a mockingbird. you created your own sigil, didn't you?
littlefinger: yes.
cersei: appropriate; for a self-made man with so many songs to sing.
littlefinger: i'm glad you like it. some people are fortunate enough to be born into the right family. others have to find their own way.
cersei: i heard a song once. about a boy of modest means; [who] found his way into the home of a very prominent family. he loved the eldest daughter. sadly, she had eyes for another.
littlefinger: when boys and girls live in the same home, awkward situations can arise. sometimes i've heard even brothers and sisters develop certain affections. and when those affections become common knowledge, well that is an awkward situation indeed. especially in a prominent family. prominent families often forget a simple truth i found.
cersei: and which truth is that?
littlefinger: knowledge is power.
cersei [to her guards]: seize him. cut his throat. stop…oh wait…i've changed my mind. let him go. step back three paces. turn around. close your eyes.
cersei [to littlefinger]: power is power. do see see if you can take some time away from your coins and your whores to locate the stark girl for me. i would very much appreciate it.
cersei: *makes her exit, with her guards in tow.*
power is the ability to dictate the terms, and if need be, take people off the board. people is the ability to mobilize forces, and if need be, weaponize the policies and procedures in your favor. power is power. knowledge, if not carefully managed, is a liability.
take that meghan markle and oprah winfrey interview as example. in looking back at this interview, it’s so curious that it begins with meghan markle; excuse me, meghan sussex; by herself sharing her account with oprah. meghan is a woman of immense depth. but the level of fame she now has is not a result of that depth, but a consequence of her marriage to prince harry. so, in the context (because we did not come out of a coconut tree) of an exposé-that-is-not-an-exposé interview with oprah about one’s experience within the british royal family, why begin solely focusing on the woman who, at the time of the interview, had only been in the institution for approximately 2 years, 9 months and not the man that has been in that family since birth?
in understanding that subtlety, we understand the positioning of the interview.
then, we bring our attention to the actual words that meghan is saying. specifically, we focus on the reasons she believes what her and prince harry have done, by stepping away from their roles and duties as senior royals and ostensibly fleeing to america, is not only good for them but is something that should be shared with the public:
“…to be able to just make a choice on your own. to be able to speak for yourself…”
“meghan:…we were both really aware…this [the royal wedding] wasn’t our day, this was the day that was planned for the world.
oprah: everybody who gets married knows that you are really marrying the family, too. but you weren't just marrying a family, you were marrying a 1,200 year old institution; you were marrying the monarchy. what did you think it was going to be like?
meghan: i will say i went into it naively; because i didn’t grow up knowing much about the royal family…
oprah: but you were certainly aware of the royals, and if you were going to marry a royal then you would do research about what that would mean.
meghan: i didn’t do any research at all…i’ve never looked up my husband online. i just didn’t feel a need to, because everything i needed to know, he was sharing with me. right? or, everything that we thought i needed to know, he was sharing with me.
oprah: so, you didn’t have a conversation with yourself, talking with your friends or thinking about what it would be like…to marry a prince; who is harry; who you had fallen in love with; and what it would mean to be a part of that family. you didn’t give it a lot of thought?4
meghan: we thought about what we thought it might be.
oprah: which is, that’s what i’m trying to get..?
meghan: yeah, i didn’t fully understand what the job was, right? what does it mean to be a working royal? what do you do? what does that mean? i knew that he and i were very aligned in all of our cause-driven work. that was part of our initial connection. and what we talked about in the beginning of our courtship…but there was no way of understanding what the day-to-day would be like. i didn’t romanticize any element of it, but i think as americans, especially, what do you know about the royals? what you read in fairy tales. you think is what you know about the royals, right? so, it’s easy to have an image of it that is so far from reality. that’s what was really tricky over those past few years is, when the perception and the reality are two very different things. and you’re being judged on the perception, but you’re living the reality of it. there’s a complete misalignment and there’s no way to explain that to people.
meghan:…i did anything they told me to do. of course i did. because it was also through the lens of ‘and we’ll protect you.’ so even as things started to roll out in the media, that ii didn’t see but my friends would call me and say ‘meg, this is really bad.’ because i didn’t see it, i’d go, ‘don’t worry, i’m being protected.’ i believed that. and…that was really hard to reconcile because it was only once we were married and everything started to worse that not only was i not being protected, but that they were really to lie to protect other members of the family. but they weren’t really to tell the truth to protect me and my husband.
prince harry:…i then got told, short notice, that security was going to be removed. by this point, courtesy of the daily mail, the world knew our exact location. suddenly, it dawned on me…the boarders could be closed; we’re going to have our security removed; the world knows where we are; it’s not safe, it’s not secure…due to our change of status [as we] would no longer be official working members of the royal family.
prince harry: i was desperate. i went to all the places which i thought i should go to to ask for help. we both did. separately, and together.
oprah: so, you left because you were asking for help and couldn’t get it?
prince harry: yeah. but we never left.
meghan: we never left the family. we only wanted to have the same type of role that exists, right? there’s senior members of the family, and then there’s non-senior members. and we said specifically, we’re stepping back from senior roles to be just like several, i mean i could think of so many right now so are royal highness, prince or princess, duke or duchess who earn a living, live on palace grounds and can support the queen if and when called upon. so, we weren’t reinventing the wheel here. we were saying, ‘ok, this isn’t working for everyone; we’re in a lot of pain. you can’t provide us with the help we need. we can just take a step back. we can do it in a commonwealth country…
prince harry: [to] take a breath.
oprah: and you wanted to take a breath from what, specifically? let’s be clear.
prince harry: from this constant barrage. my biggest concern was history repeating itself.”
before we continue with our analysis, as students of power, it is awe-inspiring to witness meghan live in harry’s psyche through the spirit of his mother. we don’t know if this is meghan’s doing or harry’s. i reckon they’re both at fault. but it’s incredible to witness the fact that harry has transposed princess diana’s legacy onto meghan such that any threat to meghan, is another chance that his mother could be harmed. again. and given that he was powerless to protect his mother from peril when he was younger, meghan presents the opportunity to rewrite history and, in his own words, stop it from repeating itself. but that’s just my amateur psychoanalysis.
what stands out from this oprah interview, and i do appreciate you taking this detour with me, is that meghan and harry, and specifically meghan, are clear victims. it’s almost impossible to deny their victimhood. their context is incredibly empathetic: i mean, how many of us have been lied to by institutions, or groups of people, who were not who they purported themselves to be? who, although had no fiduciary duty towards us, their negligence caused us harm. it’s sad that this dereliction of care is a universal story and meghan and harry are not alone in their suffering.
that said, they both overplayed their hands because they did not understand the game they were actually playing.
they felt powerless, and thought to themselves, ‘if we leave, we can catch out breath and ostensibly regain a semblance of control and a silver of strength.’ this was the correct plan. but their execution of this legitimately great plan was foiled, and continues to be foiled, by the fact that meghan and harry talk too much. they not only lack privacy in a positive sense, but they lack it in a normative one as well.
had the duke and duchess of sussex came to america, not as refugees but as sovereigns looking to stake their claim in the futile land that is the golden state, whilst refusing to share, not even to oprah, the family’s secrets, they would be in a much, much stronger position than they are today.
when i was younger, i read this oprah interview as an impulse towards fame on meghan and harry’s part. their continual misstep of speaking far, far too soon. as they did when they not only announced their departure as ‘senior’ members of the royal family but also their transatlantic move to north america, the launch of their charitable entity, and how they planned to raise their son whilst their tended to their nuclear family. better put, they allowed people who, had historically never approached them in good faith the exact targets to hit in attempts to derail or defame their happiness and success.
but now, in rewatching that oprah interview, i no longer believe fame was the goal; punching back was. i understand what it’s like to be beaten down and have others stomp on me while i’m in a vulnerable state. i understand what it’s like to have people tell me they’re on my side and then be the same ones responsible for my downfall. i understand what it’s like to walk into a situation with immense hope and have that hope crushed out of me by jealous, envious fake bitches. i understand meghan markle, excuse me, meghan sussex; which is why i will always support her pursuits of getting what she wants.
but to be objective, meghan’s role in her own downfall is that she believed knowledge is power. that in sharing what she knew to be truth of what happened to her, she would take power back from those who had harmed her. but that was not, and is not, the case.
as i wrote, power is the ability to dictate the terms, and if need be, take people off the board. people is the ability to mobilize forces, and if need be, weaponize the policies and procedures in your favor. power is power. knowledge, if not carefully managed, is a liability.
had meghan and harry said nothing. not a word of the pain they endured at the hands of those who had no right to inflict it upon them, their shadow would forever haunt the british royal family. because there would be a lingering question of, “when will they speak, and what will they say?” on this side of the atlantic, every announcement, every venture, would become enticing because it wouldn’t be clouded by the fog of retribution. instead, it would be illuminate with the glow of transcendence. they wouldn’t be british royals in exile, they’d be proper american entrepreneurs with a most interesting backstory that the refuse to speak about.
and in that tension, between what is known and what largely remains unsaid, is canvas for us to project all of our fantasies upon.
and had meghan and harry done this, they, too, would be the cam girls of our dreams: a real life fantasy…a moodboard for us to displace our hopes onto. a walking id of our repressed desires. that said, in living up to our fantasies, it’s likely we’d still end up hating them, as we do now; but this time, much more silently. after all, no one likes a perfect person.
but the self-discipline to keep your mouth shut long enough for the world to fall in love with you, and the cunning to understand that once the world is on your side, then you can begin to tell the truth of what you endured, gives you the power to actually dictate the terms. it’s exactly as i said in my treatise on corporate life:
“there’s a real indignity to corporate life. a hollowing of the spirit so to speak. but in that hollowness, there are opportunities to gain resilience. and that’s what keeps me going. the idea that this, too, shall past. and i’ll have been made better as a result. not by the bullshit i endured. but the woman i became in being able to navigate egos, eccentricities, and the ego-death that comes with playing humble while you silently consolidate power.”
it’s not about remaining silent out of fear. nor is it about telling the truth just to shame the devil. it’s about understanding what it is you actually want, and if opening your mouth to speak is the best way to go about getting it. it’s about understanding the hand you’ve been dealt as it relates to the board you’re actually on; not the one you wish you were on. it’s about understanding the game you’re actually playing, and staying in it long enough to win.
it is never about revenge, or simply proving a point.
it’s about understanding that power may not be a young woman’s game, but weaponized patience, strategic silence, and situational awareness is.
so, before you speak prematurely, i would ask myself, “cui bono?” and if it’s not you, then respectfully, shut the fuck up.
sweet dreams,
a diouana woman
p.s. truth or dare
you know how in your diary, you write something down then rip it out and place it in the tiny makeup bag you keep in your purse as a manifestation method? yeah, these p.s. truth or dares are the digital versions of my little ripped off notes.
truth: actually understanding the game you’re play. you may think you’re not playing a game, but we’re all playing a game. just make sure it’s the game you actually want to play.
dare: failing to understand that you’re playing a game. even if you do not believe yourself to be a player on the board.
disclaimer: the views expressed in this essay are those of the author and do not reflect the views of any employer, past or current.
this came from the comment section of the financial times. the username of the commentor and the article under which the comment appears escapes me.
marco, book #30: the reunion, pg. 71 (by k.a. applegate)
in reading the transcript, one finds oprah incredibly funny in her line of question. she’s much more subtle than diane ever was in her set ups.