Let’s Reclaim Interrupting
Women have long been conditioned to believe that interrupting isn’t polite. It’s time to shift our thinking.
I’ve long been self conscious about my “bad” habit of interrupting. Conventional wisdom teaches us that it’s not a polite thing to do, especially if you’re a woman. I thought of that when I read what Lina AbiRafeh, a global women's rights activist, recently posted on LinkedIn:
“From childhood, many men are rewarded for speaking up, taking space, asserting ideas quickly and loudly. Over time, this creates an unspoken hierarchy of whose voice matters more. Interruption becomes less about conversation and more about entitlement—often unconscious, rarely malicious, but deeply ingrained.”
That made me pause and made me think. For me, interrupting isn’t about entitlement or taking up space. It’s more about enthusiasm. Years ago I heard someone describe interrupting as “conversational layering” and immediately I thought, “Yes! That’s what I’m doing!”
To be clear, it’s not that I think my thoughts matter more than other people’s. As a journalist, I know from experience that you learn more from listening than from talking.
And perhaps it would be empowering to “take back” interrupting in the name of feminism, start a trend of “woman-splaining” to pompous men in meetings. But I have another idea—and it comes from the same place my instinct to interrupt comes from: What if women re-framed how we think about interrupting altogether? What if, instead of thinking of it as an attempt to pull attention away from the person speaking, we instead view it as a way of enriching what they are saying—by joining them and supporting them—and building on their ideas, a kind of verbal collaboration.
Now, early on in a working or personal relationship, I’ll explain myself by saying something like “I have a tendency to interrupt, but I only do it when I’m excited by the conversation and want to build on what you’re saying. I think of it as conversational layering. I hope you don’t think it’s rude and if you do, please tell me.”
Much to my delight, after I gave this disclaimer at a Persistent edit meeting, I was met by understanding and agreement. Everyone in the all-women group got that it’s not about trying to one up each other but about layering our good ideas, and our conversations are the richer for it.
