At the end of Part 1, in which I shared the true confession that I really believed that roadrunners were emu-sized, Ellen commented, simply: Misrepresentation matters.
Yes! Exactly! That is exactly it. This is the other half of my Day 29 post, representation. Representation matters, because it reminds us that our way of being and seeing the world isn't the only way. It offers us another standard for normal.
And misrepresentation matters, because we form our ideas of how the world works based not only on our own experience, but also on the stories and images that we hear and see. We experience those, too. In many cases, these pervasive images and stories about people become more powerful than our own experiences. And then, in turn, we interpret our experiences through the expectations that come from those images and stories.
Let me give you an example. One day many years ago, when I was a student in the Bay Area, I was driving somewhere in Oakland, and I got lost. This was well before cell phones, so I pulled over to get out my handy dandy Thomas Guide, and two guys came up to the car to see if I was lost. They gave me directions, and I thanked them, and I got where I was going.
If you know the demographics of Oakland, you know that the chances were good that these two young men were African-American (in fact, they happened to be). At the time, Oakland had a very high crime rate. And representations of African-Americans were (and still are) often of urban youth, portrayed as gang-involved, dangerous, etc etc. When I told someone about my experience - feeling grateful that these guys had been able to help me - her first response was, I can't believe you talked to them, they were probably planning to carjack you.
Now, here's the thing. If it had been her, and she'd pulled over and been approached in the same way, she would have double-checked to be sure her doors were locked, pulled away, and told people (and believed) that she'd narrowly avoided a carjacking. Her experience was interpreted through a lens that she already held, and then reinforced that lens and made it real.
We often suggest that if people could only meet one another, they'd understand that their stories about The Other aren't true. But I think what I'm saying is that it isn't quite that simple. If we interpret our interactions with other people through powerful preexisting lenses that are informed by pervasive misrepresentations, the chances are high that we will interpret what we see in light of our beliefs, and we'll end up reinforcing those beliefs, rather than disrupting them. I'm not saying that it's not important to create many many opportunities for people of different backgrounds, ethnicities, genders, and so on, to interact. But I am saying that it isn't sufficient. And I am saying that we need to think carefully about how people are represented. We often mock or roll our eyes at folks when they call out problematic representations - but they all matter. It's not about being politically correct - it's about realizing that all those "little jokes" and "mistakes" add up to something really big and intractable.
Because it's not just about thinking that roadrunners are emu-sized, or that rabbits hatch from eggs. It's about thinking that a young woman who gets raped after having several drinks or while wearing something revealing was asking for it. Or that she actually wanted it, but then was too embarrassed to admit it, and so made a false accusation. Right?
Misrepresentation matters. Amen.
Showing posts with label feminism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label feminism. Show all posts
Saturday, August 24, 2019
Thursday, August 1, 2019
Day 21: What did they see?
There have been various of my usual sorts of things tumbling about in my mind, capturing the magpie's attention to greater and lesser degrees, over the last few days. I'd been thinking that maybe one of those might come to the forefront today, asking to be written about, when I saw this article, entitled, "Video shows last moments of Dallas man, restrained as officers joked".
And it just seemed like something that needed to be acknowledged.
Because it's not the first time. And, although I wish with all my heart that this next bit weren't so true that it's appallingly easy to type, it won't be the last.
There are so very many things to say about this. Things that acknowledge complexity. But in my mind there's also something very simple here. It's not OK. It's not OK to watch someone die because of something you did to them, while laughing. Ever.
I keep stalling out there and trying to figure out what to say next. I know that what many people say at this point is that police officers sign up for a job that is dangerous, and they respond as they do because of their training and because they're working in dangerous environments. And that many of them - most of them, even - are good people. They'd also say in this case that this man was mentally ill (he is the one who called the police because he was having an episode of his illness), and on drugs. But saying that in this context is sort of like saying that Brock Turner had Olympic prospects. Or that a 16-year-old rape victim should have been told that pressing charges against her rapist would ruin his life. It's really not the point. It privileges the narrative, the perspective, the life, of a person who did something callous and fundamentally inhuman. It turns the victim into the perpetrator, and erases their perspective and humanity from the story.
What I keep coming back to, especially in cases like this, where we're not talking about a split-second reaction, but rather about a prolonged, extended act of callous violence and disregard for the suffering of another human being, is - what did those officers see? Not whom did they see, because it seems to me that they must not - they could not - have been seeing a fellow human being; but rather what did they see? Does mental illness inherently make someone less worthy of consideration as a human being? Does Blackness? I mean, I get that the data are in on that one - for many people, the answer is yes.
And I don't think it's just a matter of, police officers have to make split-second life-or-death decisions, so sometimes they get it wrong (that was certainly not the case here, or in so many other cases). That is, in so many ways, too easy. It not only lets those who actually commit these crimes off the hook, but it lets all of us off the hook. It allows us to refuse to take responsibility for all of the many many narratives floating around that tell us that the mentally ill are somehow less human; that people of color are somehow less human. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that, even in a situation where someone poses a danger, it is possible to see them as a human being. And that's why I don't buy the argument that officers need to be able to just act in the face of danger, full stop. Sure they do; but whom do they see as they move towards action? What narratives, life experiences, beliefs inform their vision? We know that people of color, and especially Black men, are seen as larger, older, more dangerous than white men of the same ages and sizes. That's a cultural lens. It's the racist smog we breathe. Put a gun in the hands of someone steeped in that smog, and it's nearly impossible to prevent tragedies.
It's the laughter that makes me ill. What would it take for me to laugh at the dying suffering of any living being? What justifies that distancing of one self from another? What do we have to tell ourselves to make that seem in any way normal; or, worse than normal - understandable, justifiable, something that we support? I do not believe that police work requires inhumanity. I don't buy the narrative that we need tough people to do the tough work - not if our definition of tough people is, people who don't see the spark of humanness in other people. It seems to me that the only people who should be doing that tough work are people who are able to see that. And that we need to provide the support and structure to make that possible.
There is so much more to say here, so much to consider, so many intertwining forces that come together to create these tragedies, again and again. But mostly, my heart cries out: how could they laugh? How can they live with the knowledge that they laughed? What are we doing to ourselves to create a world where that happens?
And it just seemed like something that needed to be acknowledged.
Because it's not the first time. And, although I wish with all my heart that this next bit weren't so true that it's appallingly easy to type, it won't be the last.
There are so very many things to say about this. Things that acknowledge complexity. But in my mind there's also something very simple here. It's not OK. It's not OK to watch someone die because of something you did to them, while laughing. Ever.
I keep stalling out there and trying to figure out what to say next. I know that what many people say at this point is that police officers sign up for a job that is dangerous, and they respond as they do because of their training and because they're working in dangerous environments. And that many of them - most of them, even - are good people. They'd also say in this case that this man was mentally ill (he is the one who called the police because he was having an episode of his illness), and on drugs. But saying that in this context is sort of like saying that Brock Turner had Olympic prospects. Or that a 16-year-old rape victim should have been told that pressing charges against her rapist would ruin his life. It's really not the point. It privileges the narrative, the perspective, the life, of a person who did something callous and fundamentally inhuman. It turns the victim into the perpetrator, and erases their perspective and humanity from the story.
What I keep coming back to, especially in cases like this, where we're not talking about a split-second reaction, but rather about a prolonged, extended act of callous violence and disregard for the suffering of another human being, is - what did those officers see? Not whom did they see, because it seems to me that they must not - they could not - have been seeing a fellow human being; but rather what did they see? Does mental illness inherently make someone less worthy of consideration as a human being? Does Blackness? I mean, I get that the data are in on that one - for many people, the answer is yes.
And I don't think it's just a matter of, police officers have to make split-second life-or-death decisions, so sometimes they get it wrong (that was certainly not the case here, or in so many other cases). That is, in so many ways, too easy. It not only lets those who actually commit these crimes off the hook, but it lets all of us off the hook. It allows us to refuse to take responsibility for all of the many many narratives floating around that tell us that the mentally ill are somehow less human; that people of color are somehow less human. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that, even in a situation where someone poses a danger, it is possible to see them as a human being. And that's why I don't buy the argument that officers need to be able to just act in the face of danger, full stop. Sure they do; but whom do they see as they move towards action? What narratives, life experiences, beliefs inform their vision? We know that people of color, and especially Black men, are seen as larger, older, more dangerous than white men of the same ages and sizes. That's a cultural lens. It's the racist smog we breathe. Put a gun in the hands of someone steeped in that smog, and it's nearly impossible to prevent tragedies.
It's the laughter that makes me ill. What would it take for me to laugh at the dying suffering of any living being? What justifies that distancing of one self from another? What do we have to tell ourselves to make that seem in any way normal; or, worse than normal - understandable, justifiable, something that we support? I do not believe that police work requires inhumanity. I don't buy the narrative that we need tough people to do the tough work - not if our definition of tough people is, people who don't see the spark of humanness in other people. It seems to me that the only people who should be doing that tough work are people who are able to see that. And that we need to provide the support and structure to make that possible.
There is so much more to say here, so much to consider, so many intertwining forces that come together to create these tragedies, again and again. But mostly, my heart cries out: how could they laugh? How can they live with the knowledge that they laughed? What are we doing to ourselves to create a world where that happens?
Sunday, December 10, 2017
Mulling over harrassment - long and anguished
OK, you know this had to happen, right? I mean me, sharing some thoughts about #metoo and sexual harrassment and Franken and Moore and the whole thing. Please feel free to skip this if it isn't your cup of tea, and return next time for our regular programming.
I have, as I'm sure many of you have, been watching and contemplating and contextualizing and trying to understand and processing how I feel about each of these revelations and their consequences or lack thereof, and wanting to write something about it, but haven't quite been sure where to start. It seems to me that there are so many threads that must be followed to come to even some sort of understanding of the whole fabric that, as it were, clothes this moment in history - which one to pick at first?
Having just spent a weekend at my annual conference (and there's a post in the queue about that), the American Anthropological Association's Annual Meetings, I've been thinking a lot about positionality. The idea there is that the various elements of my position - elements which are commonly thought of as identity, but which I would think of as being much more fluid and less stable than the noun "identity" suggests - have a significant relationship to my perspective on the world. They should, therefore, not be taken for granted; there is no objective or right or unmarked position from which anyone can stand and opine. So, it's perhaps worth coming right out and stating that I am: a European-American, cisgendered, straight, married, upper-middle-class, non-theist/animist, feminist, progressive woman who has two daughters and a PhD in the social sciences. And so much more, as you know (a knitter, a horse owner, a hiker, a reader, a friend - the list, as it does for all of us, goes on).
For the purposes of understanding my thoughts about sexual harrassment, the label "progressive" up there is perhaps the most relevant. To me, being a progressive is different from (although with some overlap) being a liberal, and means that I believe that we, as a society, can do better than we have in the past. Not by rejecting everything from the past part and parcel, but rather by learning from it, and reaching toward something better in the future. For me (and I wouldn't presume to think that this is how all progressives think), that means doing my best to create a world that resembles the Beloved Community discussed as early as the early 20th century (the philosopher Josiah Royce), although it is perhaps most associated with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The way I tend to think of the beloved community is this: that when we look at other human beings, we see ourselves. As an animist, I actually would extend that to the planet as a whole, but that's a discussion for another day. By seeing ourselves, I do not mean, being like ourselves; I mean seeing them as full and complete human beings, with the same desires for respect and peace and safety and well-being that we have. Seeing here means holding all the complexity of another person with affection and acceptance. If we look at another person and see ourselves, surely we would not want them to suffer, to be lacking in the resources that they need to live a full life, to feel fundamentally that they are not cared for and respected? Love informs the beloved community, not power.
Power informs sexual harrassment, not love. Not only power, but a lens that views women as not-people, not-self - instead as available for the whims of men either because those men are in power or because they want to feel powerful. (I realize that men are also sexually harrassed by other men; however, for the moment, I am going to center the perspective of women for two reasons: one, that perspective so rarely takes center stage, and two, the vast majority of those who endure sexual harrassment and assault are women.)
There are a number of threads that feed into a culture that accepts harrassment as part of the normal workings of everyday life. One of the most insidious is the one that frames men as a) highly sexual, b) inherently violent, and c) out of control of both their sexuality and violence. The onus for controlling men's sexuality and violence therefore falls on women. It is of critical importance to note that this is a social construct: men are not inherently more sexual or violent than women, and they are certainly not more out of control of their impulses than women. A culture of toxic masculinity both gives men permission to understand themselves this way, and traps them into that understanding, denying them access to their whole selves, selves that need and want love and affection and a full range of emotion, selves that often pay serious physical and emotional prices for locking away those sides of themselves. The NYT had a great article today on exactly this, the power of touch and how critical it is for all human health, and how men's touch is so frequently given only two avenues for expression: violence, and sex (and how often those two then become conflated).
Another thread is one which treats women as somehow not belonging to the more general class of "people". Women are framed as weak and in need of protection; they are also framed as the purview of men. I can't tell you how many times I have heard people say, either "I was raised" (if the person is a man), or "I raised my boys" (a parent speaking of sons) "to respect women/to never hit a girl"; these often come in one breath. To which I invariably respond (or bite my tongue to stop myself from responding), why just women and girls? Why don't we raise our boys to not hit people? And to include women and girls in the class of "people"? This framing reinforces an understanding of women as weak, and in need of protection (usually by a man, which in turn reinforces our understanding of women as belonging to men). Imagine how different things might be if we raised people to respect people, where respect means many things, including allowing all people the integrity of their bodies.
Related to this thread is that of our treatment of women when it comes to reproduction. Women's bodies become the belongings of society. We regulate their access to birth control, and to reproductive health services, including abortion. Powerful men who enact the laws that regulate these things publicly sometimes encourage "their" women to make use of these services, up to and including the abortions that these men attempt to make illegal, when it suits the interests of those powerful men. Our nation's handling of women's bodies is, to my mind, one of the places where we are farthest from the beloved community that I spoke of earlier. If we truly value humans and human lives, why would we not do two things: ensure that women have access to safe, legal abortions, and, at the same time, work our hardest to create a world where that service is needed rarely? By that I mean valuing all life: the lives of mothers before, during, and after conception and birth, and the lives of children after they are born. This means easy and affordable access to: birth control; prenatal and postnatal health services; health care for infants and children; real food; high-quality public education from kindergarten through college; safe places to live and play; either support for mothers who decide to stay home, or high-quality affordable child care for those who need or want to work outside the home; a living wage. Also, a world in which they do not have to fear sexual assault. Do you see? Women are vulnerable. Laws which deny women full and free rights to their bodies and to choices about reproduction treat women as lesser humans and as society's possessions. Our current system, which limits women's access to birth control and health services, and which doesn't support them in raising healthy children, a social system which simultaneously supports men in (and even encourages them) harrassing and assaulting women with few, if any consequences (and certainly even fewer when it comes to then raising and supporting children who might result from such assaults), is a nightmare. It is also the natural result, and perhaps even definition, of patriarchy.
It is in the context of this nightmare that the assaults that we are hearing about occur, and have occurred for lifetimes. It is in this context that women live with these assaults as the tax that they pay for being born in a woman's body. If women were people, in the way that men are people, can you imagine how the world might be instead? I am reminded here of Muriel Rukeyser: "What would happen if one woman spoke the truth about her life? The world would split open."
And to some degree, that is what has happened. I think it's time and past time that we split this particular aspect of the world open. This is what I mean by being a progressive: I don't think that our past practices serve us here in creating the beloved community in which mutual respect and love govern our relationships to one another; the patriarchy that our current social relationships are founded upon doesn't allow for that - because it is, rather, a social order grounded in power relationships.
And here's where things get complicated. It seems to me, in watching what's happening, that progressives such as myself are embracing this moment as a chance to split the world open, to try to realign our priorities to include all humans in our vision for a just, fair, and equal society. The ousting of politicians like Franken, a man whose public face supported women's equality even while his private life included actions that were not in alignment with that, is a reflection of the desire to ensure that accountability happens, even for men whom we like. What scares me is that it appears that conservatives are not interested in creating the same culture of accountability and change within their ranks. (I want to note here that I'm speaking of general trends, not individuals.) The fact that our current sitting President was elected after being heard on tape bragging about assaulting women, coupled with what looks like the immanent election of Roy Moore, is what points me towards this conclusion. That worries me on a couple of levels. If one of the two groups who struggle for political power in this country is trying in this moment to stand on principle and oust men who actually support policies that support women, while the other of those two groups is willing to abandon principle to elect men who are harassers, in order to maintain power - well, we have a problem. It means that we disagree fundamentally on whether it is important to value women in this society that we are in the process (always and forever) of creating. It also, I think, means that we have fundamentally different ideas about what it means to respect women. The perspective that I have articulated here holds that respecting women means treating women like people; the more conservative perspective, as I see it represented in a broad range of public discourse, holds that respecting women means protecting them, preferably in the safety of their homes and roles as child-bearers and -rearers; it also separates the worlds of men and women, and holds that separation as natural and proper, instead of understanding it to be an aspect of a very particular historical moment.
At the same time, that isn't the only thing that concerns me about this particular historical moment. I worry about due process. To some degree, Franken and Trump are easy cases - there is documentation, visual or audio, of their harrassment of women. That, however, isn't true in all cases. And while I happen to believe the women who have accused Moore and, say, Weinstein, at the same time, I am not an advocate of vigilante justice, and there is something worrisome about, say, firing people (e.g., Matt Lauer among many others) without some kind of due process. And yet, we all know that due process is deeply (and I do mean deeply) flawed. There are cases upon cases of men being let off with few to no consequences for atrocities committed upon female bodies (Brock Turner, I'm looking at you). So I understand the urge to grab this moment and make. someone. pay.
I don't even know what to suggest here. I only know that I am troubled. That I believe with all my heart that women are people and should be allowed a full range of expression and self-determination. That I believe with all my heart that men are people and should be allowed a full range of expression and self-determination. That I believe that we can create a world in which those things are possible. But that we are far away from that world, and, I fear, getting further. I reread this and feel that it's too long, and yet there is so much I didn't get to say. I welcome your thoughts and insights.
ETA: As a reward for getting through all that, two humorously serious takes on consent and harrassment:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXRYlfjlFLk (Tracee Ellis Ross rocks)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZwvrxVavnQ. (tea and consent)
I have, as I'm sure many of you have, been watching and contemplating and contextualizing and trying to understand and processing how I feel about each of these revelations and their consequences or lack thereof, and wanting to write something about it, but haven't quite been sure where to start. It seems to me that there are so many threads that must be followed to come to even some sort of understanding of the whole fabric that, as it were, clothes this moment in history - which one to pick at first?
Having just spent a weekend at my annual conference (and there's a post in the queue about that), the American Anthropological Association's Annual Meetings, I've been thinking a lot about positionality. The idea there is that the various elements of my position - elements which are commonly thought of as identity, but which I would think of as being much more fluid and less stable than the noun "identity" suggests - have a significant relationship to my perspective on the world. They should, therefore, not be taken for granted; there is no objective or right or unmarked position from which anyone can stand and opine. So, it's perhaps worth coming right out and stating that I am: a European-American, cisgendered, straight, married, upper-middle-class, non-theist/animist, feminist, progressive woman who has two daughters and a PhD in the social sciences. And so much more, as you know (a knitter, a horse owner, a hiker, a reader, a friend - the list, as it does for all of us, goes on).
For the purposes of understanding my thoughts about sexual harrassment, the label "progressive" up there is perhaps the most relevant. To me, being a progressive is different from (although with some overlap) being a liberal, and means that I believe that we, as a society, can do better than we have in the past. Not by rejecting everything from the past part and parcel, but rather by learning from it, and reaching toward something better in the future. For me (and I wouldn't presume to think that this is how all progressives think), that means doing my best to create a world that resembles the Beloved Community discussed as early as the early 20th century (the philosopher Josiah Royce), although it is perhaps most associated with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The way I tend to think of the beloved community is this: that when we look at other human beings, we see ourselves. As an animist, I actually would extend that to the planet as a whole, but that's a discussion for another day. By seeing ourselves, I do not mean, being like ourselves; I mean seeing them as full and complete human beings, with the same desires for respect and peace and safety and well-being that we have. Seeing here means holding all the complexity of another person with affection and acceptance. If we look at another person and see ourselves, surely we would not want them to suffer, to be lacking in the resources that they need to live a full life, to feel fundamentally that they are not cared for and respected? Love informs the beloved community, not power.
Power informs sexual harrassment, not love. Not only power, but a lens that views women as not-people, not-self - instead as available for the whims of men either because those men are in power or because they want to feel powerful. (I realize that men are also sexually harrassed by other men; however, for the moment, I am going to center the perspective of women for two reasons: one, that perspective so rarely takes center stage, and two, the vast majority of those who endure sexual harrassment and assault are women.)
There are a number of threads that feed into a culture that accepts harrassment as part of the normal workings of everyday life. One of the most insidious is the one that frames men as a) highly sexual, b) inherently violent, and c) out of control of both their sexuality and violence. The onus for controlling men's sexuality and violence therefore falls on women. It is of critical importance to note that this is a social construct: men are not inherently more sexual or violent than women, and they are certainly not more out of control of their impulses than women. A culture of toxic masculinity both gives men permission to understand themselves this way, and traps them into that understanding, denying them access to their whole selves, selves that need and want love and affection and a full range of emotion, selves that often pay serious physical and emotional prices for locking away those sides of themselves. The NYT had a great article today on exactly this, the power of touch and how critical it is for all human health, and how men's touch is so frequently given only two avenues for expression: violence, and sex (and how often those two then become conflated).
Another thread is one which treats women as somehow not belonging to the more general class of "people". Women are framed as weak and in need of protection; they are also framed as the purview of men. I can't tell you how many times I have heard people say, either "I was raised" (if the person is a man), or "I raised my boys" (a parent speaking of sons) "to respect women/to never hit a girl"; these often come in one breath. To which I invariably respond (or bite my tongue to stop myself from responding), why just women and girls? Why don't we raise our boys to not hit people? And to include women and girls in the class of "people"? This framing reinforces an understanding of women as weak, and in need of protection (usually by a man, which in turn reinforces our understanding of women as belonging to men). Imagine how different things might be if we raised people to respect people, where respect means many things, including allowing all people the integrity of their bodies.
Related to this thread is that of our treatment of women when it comes to reproduction. Women's bodies become the belongings of society. We regulate their access to birth control, and to reproductive health services, including abortion. Powerful men who enact the laws that regulate these things publicly sometimes encourage "their" women to make use of these services, up to and including the abortions that these men attempt to make illegal, when it suits the interests of those powerful men. Our nation's handling of women's bodies is, to my mind, one of the places where we are farthest from the beloved community that I spoke of earlier. If we truly value humans and human lives, why would we not do two things: ensure that women have access to safe, legal abortions, and, at the same time, work our hardest to create a world where that service is needed rarely? By that I mean valuing all life: the lives of mothers before, during, and after conception and birth, and the lives of children after they are born. This means easy and affordable access to: birth control; prenatal and postnatal health services; health care for infants and children; real food; high-quality public education from kindergarten through college; safe places to live and play; either support for mothers who decide to stay home, or high-quality affordable child care for those who need or want to work outside the home; a living wage. Also, a world in which they do not have to fear sexual assault. Do you see? Women are vulnerable. Laws which deny women full and free rights to their bodies and to choices about reproduction treat women as lesser humans and as society's possessions. Our current system, which limits women's access to birth control and health services, and which doesn't support them in raising healthy children, a social system which simultaneously supports men in (and even encourages them) harrassing and assaulting women with few, if any consequences (and certainly even fewer when it comes to then raising and supporting children who might result from such assaults), is a nightmare. It is also the natural result, and perhaps even definition, of patriarchy.
It is in the context of this nightmare that the assaults that we are hearing about occur, and have occurred for lifetimes. It is in this context that women live with these assaults as the tax that they pay for being born in a woman's body. If women were people, in the way that men are people, can you imagine how the world might be instead? I am reminded here of Muriel Rukeyser: "What would happen if one woman spoke the truth about her life? The world would split open."
And to some degree, that is what has happened. I think it's time and past time that we split this particular aspect of the world open. This is what I mean by being a progressive: I don't think that our past practices serve us here in creating the beloved community in which mutual respect and love govern our relationships to one another; the patriarchy that our current social relationships are founded upon doesn't allow for that - because it is, rather, a social order grounded in power relationships.
And here's where things get complicated. It seems to me, in watching what's happening, that progressives such as myself are embracing this moment as a chance to split the world open, to try to realign our priorities to include all humans in our vision for a just, fair, and equal society. The ousting of politicians like Franken, a man whose public face supported women's equality even while his private life included actions that were not in alignment with that, is a reflection of the desire to ensure that accountability happens, even for men whom we like. What scares me is that it appears that conservatives are not interested in creating the same culture of accountability and change within their ranks. (I want to note here that I'm speaking of general trends, not individuals.) The fact that our current sitting President was elected after being heard on tape bragging about assaulting women, coupled with what looks like the immanent election of Roy Moore, is what points me towards this conclusion. That worries me on a couple of levels. If one of the two groups who struggle for political power in this country is trying in this moment to stand on principle and oust men who actually support policies that support women, while the other of those two groups is willing to abandon principle to elect men who are harassers, in order to maintain power - well, we have a problem. It means that we disagree fundamentally on whether it is important to value women in this society that we are in the process (always and forever) of creating. It also, I think, means that we have fundamentally different ideas about what it means to respect women. The perspective that I have articulated here holds that respecting women means treating women like people; the more conservative perspective, as I see it represented in a broad range of public discourse, holds that respecting women means protecting them, preferably in the safety of their homes and roles as child-bearers and -rearers; it also separates the worlds of men and women, and holds that separation as natural and proper, instead of understanding it to be an aspect of a very particular historical moment.
At the same time, that isn't the only thing that concerns me about this particular historical moment. I worry about due process. To some degree, Franken and Trump are easy cases - there is documentation, visual or audio, of their harrassment of women. That, however, isn't true in all cases. And while I happen to believe the women who have accused Moore and, say, Weinstein, at the same time, I am not an advocate of vigilante justice, and there is something worrisome about, say, firing people (e.g., Matt Lauer among many others) without some kind of due process. And yet, we all know that due process is deeply (and I do mean deeply) flawed. There are cases upon cases of men being let off with few to no consequences for atrocities committed upon female bodies (Brock Turner, I'm looking at you). So I understand the urge to grab this moment and make. someone. pay.
I don't even know what to suggest here. I only know that I am troubled. That I believe with all my heart that women are people and should be allowed a full range of expression and self-determination. That I believe with all my heart that men are people and should be allowed a full range of expression and self-determination. That I believe that we can create a world in which those things are possible. But that we are far away from that world, and, I fear, getting further. I reread this and feel that it's too long, and yet there is so much I didn't get to say. I welcome your thoughts and insights.
ETA: As a reward for getting through all that, two humorously serious takes on consent and harrassment:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXRYlfjlFLk (Tracee Ellis Ross rocks)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZwvrxVavnQ. (tea and consent)
Wednesday, February 8, 2017
She was warned
Well, I didn't think I'd be posting again quite so soon. And I'd intended my next post to be a round-up of recent knitting projects that I've completed, and a foretaste of things to come. (True story: a package just came and I was so sure it was yarn for my next project - I bounded out the door, all excited... And the nice man handed over a package of wine from a club we belong to. My face fell. I don't think that's the reaction he was expecting at all.)
But, time and tide - and crazy doings in the world of politics - wait for no woman. So, I told you fair warning and here it is: linguistic analysis and feminism incoming...
Today's NYT coverage of the silencing of Elizabeth Warren on the floor of the Senate included, in the front page article blurb online, the following quote from Mitch McConnell*:
"She was warned. Nevertheless, she persisted."
I have to be honest. Reading that gave me cold chills.
The more complete quote was:
"She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted."
This appears to me (and judging by the articles, tweets, email messages, and Facebook posts going around, I'm by no means alone here) to encompass the history of women in a nutshell, with only the consequences left unstated: So we silenced her.
I've been mulling this over ever since (while simultaneously plotting with friends to make a t-shirt out of it; if that's your gig, stay tuned), and three things in particular strike me. They are all linked to one another, and difficult to disentangle, but here goes.
First, and perhaps most simply, what I think resonates for so many women (and the reason why the trending hashtag here is #shepersisted) is that concept of persistence. Persistence is what we do. Think of the persistence it takes to do all the "women's work" that, changing times notwithstanding, is called that because it still typically does fall on women: diapers, dishes, laundry, changing sheets/towels/toilet paper, cleaning, child care, parent care - the list goes on and on. Each of these tasks is one which must be done, but which doesn't stay done; if there's one thing we know, it's that clean dishes don't stay clean, and neither do diapers (alas). It takes a certain degree of dogged determination to hang on to the bigger picture and keep slogging through the daily round, sometimes.
As knitters, we know this one particularly well. Nothing but persistence lies between us and an FO we can use or gift, and be proud of. It's persistence that makes us rip out that miscrossed cable (12 rows back) and fix it. Persistence is what got countless pink pussyhats knitted in time for the Women's March in January (more discussion of this is bound to be forthcoming; I was fascinated).
But that persistence can also encode something darker. What is it that we are persistent in the face of? Sometimes, as above, it's drudgery or repetitiveness. But women deploy their persistence in other circumstances. In the face of demeaning comments, or of being ignored; harrassment, assault, rape; a culture which attempts to deny women the right to determine what happens to their bodies in so many ways - and which calls it locker room talk, even when the talk becomes action. Women persist as they earn less than men for doing the same work, and they persist in the face of men telling them that wage inequality just isn't a thing. We persist patiently in the face of (sometimes endless) mansplaining. (And, as a linguist, can I just tell you how much I love that word - talk about encoding a fabulous and real linguistic construct!) When we are afraid, whether for our bodies or our sanity, we persist. We persist in the face of warnings that our presence and behavior are unacceptable, and will have potentially very frightening consequences for us.
There is something even more insidious in those three little sentences, though, something that strikes me in particular as a linguist. They are encoded in the same kind of language one might use to describe imposing a punishment or consequences for a naughty child. "I warned her. I explained why. She didn't listen, so now she has to face the consequences." In my gender and language class, I have my students read an article (West and Zimmerman 1983, for those who might be interested) that looks at interruptions - defined (simplifying here a little) as a turn in the conversation that is inserted into someone else's turn, and (this is important) which is disruptive to the conversation (by, for example, changing the subject, or taking the floor over before the first speaker is finished). The authors first look at adult interruptions of children (contrary to popular belief, adults interrupt children far more often than children interrupt adults). These interruptions most frequently take place at points in the conversation when children's behavior is deemed problematic by adults, and are used to try to redirect that behavior in order to bring it into line with expectations.
And here's where things get interesting. Looking at adult same-sex and cross-sex dyadic (two-person) conversations, it is clear (and this, by the way, shows up in study after study after study) that men interrupt women far more than women interrupt men, or than men interrupt men, or than women interrupt women. And, moreover, their patterns of interruptions are remarkably congruent with adult interruptions of children. In other words, men interrupt women at points in the conversation when they deem women's actions or words or thoughts to be problematic, in order to redirect them to fit expectations more closely. "She was given an explanation" fits right into this; it suggests a speaker with superior knowledge and understanding of how one should behave, someone with the authority and power to require conformity. (It's also very patronizing.) This is just one of the many ways in which women are (and have historically been) treated as less than full adults.
To my mind, this is what those three sentences encode. We gave her a chance to behave like an adult (as defined by us) and then we interrupted her to force her into line. The "she was warned" is deeply troubling. Women who have been "warned", historically, have paid serious and often lethal prices for continuing to persist after that warning. (I also find the distancing created by the use of the passive voice disturbing - who's the agent here?) Linguists talk about the concept of "intertextuality" - the idea that a given text is understood at least in part through its link to similar texts produced elsewhere and elsewhen. This text ("we warned her") is understood, consciously or unconsciously, as located in the context of all those past threats and their consequences. It means that even though no-one will be burning Warren at the stake (but all those chants, directed at Clinton, of "jail her" and their intertextual links to "burn her" last fall were unmistakable and also resonate here), the chilling warmth of those historical flames is present.
"She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted."
Taken all together, the degree of misogyny encoded here is quite remarkable.
ETA: Male Democratic Senators were allowed to read all or part (depending on the Senator) of Coretta Scott King's letter, including the part that Senator Warren was rebuked for (http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/senate/318515-sanders-dems-read-coretta-scott-kings-letter-after-warren-silenced). As I said, it's not about party - it's about gender.
*I am focusing here, as a feminist and a linguist, on this text as spoken by a man to a woman in this context. I could, but won't, also go into why I think the rule that McConnell cited is inappropriately applied here: while the rule states that Senators should avoid accusing other Senators of behavior unbecoming to a Senator (an attempt, I assume, to help stop Senators from engaging in ad hominem attacks on one another instead of debating the merits of legislation; not a bad idea in that context), it seems to me that in this context, Mr. Sessions is being evaluated as a candidate for Attorney General, rather than as the proposer of a bill. Regardless of political leaning, the misogyny in this message seems like something that should trouble women...
But, time and tide - and crazy doings in the world of politics - wait for no woman. So, I told you fair warning and here it is: linguistic analysis and feminism incoming...
Today's NYT coverage of the silencing of Elizabeth Warren on the floor of the Senate included, in the front page article blurb online, the following quote from Mitch McConnell*:
"She was warned. Nevertheless, she persisted."
I have to be honest. Reading that gave me cold chills.
The more complete quote was:
"She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted."
This appears to me (and judging by the articles, tweets, email messages, and Facebook posts going around, I'm by no means alone here) to encompass the history of women in a nutshell, with only the consequences left unstated: So we silenced her.
I've been mulling this over ever since (while simultaneously plotting with friends to make a t-shirt out of it; if that's your gig, stay tuned), and three things in particular strike me. They are all linked to one another, and difficult to disentangle, but here goes.
First, and perhaps most simply, what I think resonates for so many women (and the reason why the trending hashtag here is #shepersisted) is that concept of persistence. Persistence is what we do. Think of the persistence it takes to do all the "women's work" that, changing times notwithstanding, is called that because it still typically does fall on women: diapers, dishes, laundry, changing sheets/towels/toilet paper, cleaning, child care, parent care - the list goes on and on. Each of these tasks is one which must be done, but which doesn't stay done; if there's one thing we know, it's that clean dishes don't stay clean, and neither do diapers (alas). It takes a certain degree of dogged determination to hang on to the bigger picture and keep slogging through the daily round, sometimes.
As knitters, we know this one particularly well. Nothing but persistence lies between us and an FO we can use or gift, and be proud of. It's persistence that makes us rip out that miscrossed cable (12 rows back) and fix it. Persistence is what got countless pink pussyhats knitted in time for the Women's March in January (more discussion of this is bound to be forthcoming; I was fascinated).
But that persistence can also encode something darker. What is it that we are persistent in the face of? Sometimes, as above, it's drudgery or repetitiveness. But women deploy their persistence in other circumstances. In the face of demeaning comments, or of being ignored; harrassment, assault, rape; a culture which attempts to deny women the right to determine what happens to their bodies in so many ways - and which calls it locker room talk, even when the talk becomes action. Women persist as they earn less than men for doing the same work, and they persist in the face of men telling them that wage inequality just isn't a thing. We persist patiently in the face of (sometimes endless) mansplaining. (And, as a linguist, can I just tell you how much I love that word - talk about encoding a fabulous and real linguistic construct!) When we are afraid, whether for our bodies or our sanity, we persist. We persist in the face of warnings that our presence and behavior are unacceptable, and will have potentially very frightening consequences for us.
There is something even more insidious in those three little sentences, though, something that strikes me in particular as a linguist. They are encoded in the same kind of language one might use to describe imposing a punishment or consequences for a naughty child. "I warned her. I explained why. She didn't listen, so now she has to face the consequences." In my gender and language class, I have my students read an article (West and Zimmerman 1983, for those who might be interested) that looks at interruptions - defined (simplifying here a little) as a turn in the conversation that is inserted into someone else's turn, and (this is important) which is disruptive to the conversation (by, for example, changing the subject, or taking the floor over before the first speaker is finished). The authors first look at adult interruptions of children (contrary to popular belief, adults interrupt children far more often than children interrupt adults). These interruptions most frequently take place at points in the conversation when children's behavior is deemed problematic by adults, and are used to try to redirect that behavior in order to bring it into line with expectations.
And here's where things get interesting. Looking at adult same-sex and cross-sex dyadic (two-person) conversations, it is clear (and this, by the way, shows up in study after study after study) that men interrupt women far more than women interrupt men, or than men interrupt men, or than women interrupt women. And, moreover, their patterns of interruptions are remarkably congruent with adult interruptions of children. In other words, men interrupt women at points in the conversation when they deem women's actions or words or thoughts to be problematic, in order to redirect them to fit expectations more closely. "She was given an explanation" fits right into this; it suggests a speaker with superior knowledge and understanding of how one should behave, someone with the authority and power to require conformity. (It's also very patronizing.) This is just one of the many ways in which women are (and have historically been) treated as less than full adults.
To my mind, this is what those three sentences encode. We gave her a chance to behave like an adult (as defined by us) and then we interrupted her to force her into line. The "she was warned" is deeply troubling. Women who have been "warned", historically, have paid serious and often lethal prices for continuing to persist after that warning. (I also find the distancing created by the use of the passive voice disturbing - who's the agent here?) Linguists talk about the concept of "intertextuality" - the idea that a given text is understood at least in part through its link to similar texts produced elsewhere and elsewhen. This text ("we warned her") is understood, consciously or unconsciously, as located in the context of all those past threats and their consequences. It means that even though no-one will be burning Warren at the stake (but all those chants, directed at Clinton, of "jail her" and their intertextual links to "burn her" last fall were unmistakable and also resonate here), the chilling warmth of those historical flames is present.
"She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted."
Taken all together, the degree of misogyny encoded here is quite remarkable.
ETA: Male Democratic Senators were allowed to read all or part (depending on the Senator) of Coretta Scott King's letter, including the part that Senator Warren was rebuked for (http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/senate/318515-sanders-dems-read-coretta-scott-kings-letter-after-warren-silenced). As I said, it's not about party - it's about gender.
*I am focusing here, as a feminist and a linguist, on this text as spoken by a man to a woman in this context. I could, but won't, also go into why I think the rule that McConnell cited is inappropriately applied here: while the rule states that Senators should avoid accusing other Senators of behavior unbecoming to a Senator (an attempt, I assume, to help stop Senators from engaging in ad hominem attacks on one another instead of debating the merits of legislation; not a bad idea in that context), it seems to me that in this context, Mr. Sessions is being evaluated as a candidate for Attorney General, rather than as the proposer of a bill. Regardless of political leaning, the misogyny in this message seems like something that should trouble women...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
