Three anecdotes make a trend
Nov. 15th, 2012 05:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dolorosa_12In this post, I'm going to be talking about sexual harassment, bullying and other generally unpleasant effects of misogyny. If you feel that isn't something you'd like to read about, feel free to scroll on by, and don't look behind the cut.
1. When I was 15-18, I worked on weekends and holidays as a shop assistant in a European bakery and chocolate shop. I think it was one of the best in Canberra. The owner, who was also the main baker and chocolate-maker, presented himself as a wholesome family man and small business-owner. He often invited regular customers to join him for a cup of coffee, where he would regale them with stories that painted him as a hardworking, friendly pillar of the community. During the week, a couple of older women worked behind the counter, and a series of apprentices worked with him in the bakery. The weekend staff were other young people, usually high school students. During the two-and-a-bit years I worked there, my weekend co-workers were six other people, five girls and one guy.
The entire bakery area (out of sight of customers) was plastered with centrefolds from Playboy and Penthouse.
My boss fired the young guy who worked with me because he said that he (my boss) found it more aesthetically pleasing to have women working behind the counter.
My boss constantly complained to us teenage girls that his wife wouldn't have sex with him.
One of my co-workers was dating an Egyptian guy. She was also overweight. My boss constantly told her how lucky she was to be dating an Arab guy because 'Arabs think that fat women are beautiful'.
2. When my mother started working in local radio, two of the guys who worked in the newsroom used to bully and harass all young women who worked there. They tried it once with her, she told them never to do it again, and they never did. Two other young women made a formal complaint about the harassment. Rather than being fired, the two guys were allowed to keep working on the newsdesk, provided that they didn't work together (I think that one ended up taking the morning shift and one the afternoon shift or something similar). The two women moved to work elsewhere.
3. When I was 14, my mother, grandfather and I went to see the Pedro Almodóvar film All About My Mother. When we came out, my grandfather had tears in his eyes. With great feeling, he said, 'Women are so unbelievably strong, and they endure such terrible things.'
In recent days, people have introduced me to The Everyday Sexism Project and Academic Men Explain Things to Me. Both of them chronicle the everyday moments of indignation and horror, the slow erosion of confidence and self. As repositories, as a way of bearing witness, as a place where women can see that they're not alone, those two sites are great. In terms of creating social change, I'm not so sure.
Ro Smith has raised similar concerns. In a post bristling with anger, she provides an anecdote of her own (and bonus points for her praise of Wild Swans:
I tuned in to a discussion concerning Peng Liyuan, the wife of Xi Jinping. Xi Jinping was selected as the next president of China on 8th November 2012. Peng Liyuan is a celebrity in her own right, being a ‘folk’ singer*, and Professor Delia Davin and Ross Terrill had been invited on the Today programme to discuss her in relation to Chinese politics. It was an odd segment. According to the Today website the discussion was supposed to ‘examine what role [women can] hope to achieve in Chinese politics today’, yet for most of the segment they discussed Peng Liyuan’s relationship to Xi Jinping with some comparisons to Mao’s wife, Jiang Qing. Ross Terrill has written a book on Jiang Qing, and the majority of the questions were directed towards him, instead of Professor Davin, who is described as ‘an expert on modern Chinese society with a special focus on gender’, who was asked what sort of music Peng Liyuan plays. [...]
This was bizarre in itself, but then, towards the end of the segment, when the question of chinese feminism was finally raised, the question was directed to the biographer, and not to the woman who is an expert on gender issues in modern Chinese society. I was flabbergasted when Terrill confidently bemoaned the lack of feminism in Chinese society, only able to reference three historical figures who had gained some power through their husbands in the distant past. This, to him, was Chinese feminism. John Humphreys, the presenter, seemed to be expecting this answer – well, of course, the Chinese are sexist, aren’t they? Not like us in the liberated West (where we ignore the female expert when discussing the question of women and power in favour of the male biographer).
She makes the leap between this radio programme ignoring the expertise of a female expert to the value - and danger - of Everyday Sexism and other sites like it:
The effect is a more thoroughly compelling impression of the cumulative grind of casual oppression that women endure much more powerfully than one woman could convey to a male companion by saying ‘But you don’t understand – it may seem like nothing to you, but I have to live with this every day!’
And yet I worry about these projects. I have the sense (I don’t know how one could possibly know for sure) that most of the followers of Escher Girls and Mansplaining are women. It’s not without value. There’s an intense relief in seeing woman after woman describe an experience so familiar to you and yet so rarely acknowledged until recently. ‘Here – here!’ I say to myself. ‘Here is proof – it’s NOT just me and it’s NOT just sometimes, this shit is everywhere‘. ‘Gaslighting‘ is a familiar experience for most women – we are taught to doubt our own judgements and our own experiences – our own subjectivity – because we are surrounded by men, often in positions of authority, telling us that our experiences are invalid – that we must be wrong, that they can judge what’s going on in our own minds better than we can. It’s really, really important to have resources like this to begin to unpick this ingrained psychological damage. I think one of the most valuable things the Internet has done has been to enable underprivileged people who would usually be silenced by the privileged to get together, grow in confidence via shared experience, and present that experience to a wider world. But it’s only half the story. Men need to listen to these accounts too.
Let me tell you another anecdote. Whenever I post on Facebook about small indignities of sexism, or larger things like the stuff I outlined above - things that happened to me or my friends and family, things that happened to other women, women I've never met, women who post online - the only people who comment are women. The only people who 'like' the posts are women. There is a small group of male friends of mine - generally the same four guys - who also comment on or 'like' such posts. All my other male friends are silent. (Aside from the one guy who waded into a post about rape and made analogies between rape and pickpocketing. That was great. I love being compared to a wallet.) They are silent on posts about the acts of petty sexism - being whistled at in the streets, being spoken over in academic and professional settings. They are silent when I mention the words of human cockroaches like Todd Akin. My female friends and a small group of guys (who, in my head, I've dubbed 'the reliable male feminists', even if they don't identify as such) post comment after supportive/outraged/constructive/thoughtful comment. It is extremely rare that a male friend will respond with, 'This is horrible. I've noticed this too. What do you think needs to be done to change things?'
What this all comes down to is subjectivity. Men, for the most part - and I'm sorry, but there's no kind way to say this - do not, as a rule, notice such things. Or if they notice them, they explain them away as isolated or unimportant instances. They do not make the connection between dismissive men who talk over women in meetings, and men who whistle and shout at women in the streets. They don't make the connection between anti-rape campaigns which focus on behaviour women should avoid in order to prevent rape, and university-run events with 'pimps and hos' themes. They do not see all these things adding up, they do not see what they do to us over time. They do not, cannot, will not see our subjectivity.
But if my (then) 73-year-old grandfather could manage it, why can't my (mainly younger-than-30) friends?
If I am angry, it is only out of love, because I love these people I'm complaining about, so clever in some ways, but so unwilling to see why this issue hurts me so much. And if I am generalising, prove me wrong.
1. When I was 15-18, I worked on weekends and holidays as a shop assistant in a European bakery and chocolate shop. I think it was one of the best in Canberra. The owner, who was also the main baker and chocolate-maker, presented himself as a wholesome family man and small business-owner. He often invited regular customers to join him for a cup of coffee, where he would regale them with stories that painted him as a hardworking, friendly pillar of the community. During the week, a couple of older women worked behind the counter, and a series of apprentices worked with him in the bakery. The weekend staff were other young people, usually high school students. During the two-and-a-bit years I worked there, my weekend co-workers were six other people, five girls and one guy.
The entire bakery area (out of sight of customers) was plastered with centrefolds from Playboy and Penthouse.
My boss fired the young guy who worked with me because he said that he (my boss) found it more aesthetically pleasing to have women working behind the counter.
My boss constantly complained to us teenage girls that his wife wouldn't have sex with him.
One of my co-workers was dating an Egyptian guy. She was also overweight. My boss constantly told her how lucky she was to be dating an Arab guy because 'Arabs think that fat women are beautiful'.
2. When my mother started working in local radio, two of the guys who worked in the newsroom used to bully and harass all young women who worked there. They tried it once with her, she told them never to do it again, and they never did. Two other young women made a formal complaint about the harassment. Rather than being fired, the two guys were allowed to keep working on the newsdesk, provided that they didn't work together (I think that one ended up taking the morning shift and one the afternoon shift or something similar). The two women moved to work elsewhere.
3. When I was 14, my mother, grandfather and I went to see the Pedro Almodóvar film All About My Mother. When we came out, my grandfather had tears in his eyes. With great feeling, he said, 'Women are so unbelievably strong, and they endure such terrible things.'
In recent days, people have introduced me to The Everyday Sexism Project and Academic Men Explain Things to Me. Both of them chronicle the everyday moments of indignation and horror, the slow erosion of confidence and self. As repositories, as a way of bearing witness, as a place where women can see that they're not alone, those two sites are great. In terms of creating social change, I'm not so sure.
Ro Smith has raised similar concerns. In a post bristling with anger, she provides an anecdote of her own (and bonus points for her praise of Wild Swans:
I tuned in to a discussion concerning Peng Liyuan, the wife of Xi Jinping. Xi Jinping was selected as the next president of China on 8th November 2012. Peng Liyuan is a celebrity in her own right, being a ‘folk’ singer*, and Professor Delia Davin and Ross Terrill had been invited on the Today programme to discuss her in relation to Chinese politics. It was an odd segment. According to the Today website the discussion was supposed to ‘examine what role [women can] hope to achieve in Chinese politics today’, yet for most of the segment they discussed Peng Liyuan’s relationship to Xi Jinping with some comparisons to Mao’s wife, Jiang Qing. Ross Terrill has written a book on Jiang Qing, and the majority of the questions were directed towards him, instead of Professor Davin, who is described as ‘an expert on modern Chinese society with a special focus on gender’, who was asked what sort of music Peng Liyuan plays. [...]
This was bizarre in itself, but then, towards the end of the segment, when the question of chinese feminism was finally raised, the question was directed to the biographer, and not to the woman who is an expert on gender issues in modern Chinese society. I was flabbergasted when Terrill confidently bemoaned the lack of feminism in Chinese society, only able to reference three historical figures who had gained some power through their husbands in the distant past. This, to him, was Chinese feminism. John Humphreys, the presenter, seemed to be expecting this answer – well, of course, the Chinese are sexist, aren’t they? Not like us in the liberated West (where we ignore the female expert when discussing the question of women and power in favour of the male biographer).
She makes the leap between this radio programme ignoring the expertise of a female expert to the value - and danger - of Everyday Sexism and other sites like it:
The effect is a more thoroughly compelling impression of the cumulative grind of casual oppression that women endure much more powerfully than one woman could convey to a male companion by saying ‘But you don’t understand – it may seem like nothing to you, but I have to live with this every day!’
And yet I worry about these projects. I have the sense (I don’t know how one could possibly know for sure) that most of the followers of Escher Girls and Mansplaining are women. It’s not without value. There’s an intense relief in seeing woman after woman describe an experience so familiar to you and yet so rarely acknowledged until recently. ‘Here – here!’ I say to myself. ‘Here is proof – it’s NOT just me and it’s NOT just sometimes, this shit is everywhere‘. ‘Gaslighting‘ is a familiar experience for most women – we are taught to doubt our own judgements and our own experiences – our own subjectivity – because we are surrounded by men, often in positions of authority, telling us that our experiences are invalid – that we must be wrong, that they can judge what’s going on in our own minds better than we can. It’s really, really important to have resources like this to begin to unpick this ingrained psychological damage. I think one of the most valuable things the Internet has done has been to enable underprivileged people who would usually be silenced by the privileged to get together, grow in confidence via shared experience, and present that experience to a wider world. But it’s only half the story. Men need to listen to these accounts too.
Let me tell you another anecdote. Whenever I post on Facebook about small indignities of sexism, or larger things like the stuff I outlined above - things that happened to me or my friends and family, things that happened to other women, women I've never met, women who post online - the only people who comment are women. The only people who 'like' the posts are women. There is a small group of male friends of mine - generally the same four guys - who also comment on or 'like' such posts. All my other male friends are silent. (Aside from the one guy who waded into a post about rape and made analogies between rape and pickpocketing. That was great. I love being compared to a wallet.) They are silent on posts about the acts of petty sexism - being whistled at in the streets, being spoken over in academic and professional settings. They are silent when I mention the words of human cockroaches like Todd Akin. My female friends and a small group of guys (who, in my head, I've dubbed 'the reliable male feminists', even if they don't identify as such) post comment after supportive/outraged/constructive/thoughtful comment. It is extremely rare that a male friend will respond with, 'This is horrible. I've noticed this too. What do you think needs to be done to change things?'
What this all comes down to is subjectivity. Men, for the most part - and I'm sorry, but there's no kind way to say this - do not, as a rule, notice such things. Or if they notice them, they explain them away as isolated or unimportant instances. They do not make the connection between dismissive men who talk over women in meetings, and men who whistle and shout at women in the streets. They don't make the connection between anti-rape campaigns which focus on behaviour women should avoid in order to prevent rape, and university-run events with 'pimps and hos' themes. They do not see all these things adding up, they do not see what they do to us over time. They do not, cannot, will not see our subjectivity.
But if my (then) 73-year-old grandfather could manage it, why can't my (mainly younger-than-30) friends?
If I am angry, it is only out of love, because I love these people I'm complaining about, so clever in some ways, but so unwilling to see why this issue hurts me so much. And if I am generalising, prove me wrong.
