The thing about the Trayvon Martin story

A lot of insightful things have been said about the Trayvon Martin story, and I don't feel much need to duplicate them here. The tragic intersection of culturally manufactured fear with our deep commitment to racial narratives and the valuing of property over persons... it's a recipe for disaster, to say the least.

But there's another significant piece of this story that merits some discussion. It centers around Zimmerman's identity rather than Martin's. Zimmerman appears to be unemployed, but at one point what he really wanted was to be a cop. He took Criminal Justice classes and applied to the sheriff's citizen patrol program. He appears to have spent a lot of time driving around his neighborhood playing cop. Being a cop, officially or otherwise, was central to his identity. And this gives us some important insights into his behavior.

I don't by any means think all cops are corrupt and power hungry. I don't by any means think that there are no good cops. What I do think is that the mindset and culture of most police agencies is such that it attracts a certain type of personality and encourages a certain type of behavior. I have jokingly said to friends before "there's two kinds of cops: those who were bullies as kids, and those who were bullied." While I was joking, and I do think there are a few cops for whom this isn't true, generally speaking, this is a good rule of thumb to bear in mind when interacting with a cop. You should be asking yourself "What does s/he have to prove?  What personal insecurity or childhood scar is this particular badge and gun supposed to be compensating for?" It will make you both more cautious and more compassionate when interacting with cops.

However, this only works if you happen to be in a privileged class, in terms of law enforcement. If you seem suspicious in any way, or you don't conform to the (generally very socially conservative) norms that most cops utilize to make their judgements about those with whom they interact, this probably won't help you. Your best bet is to avoid cops altogether. Like by not walking alone in your own neighborhood at night with your hood on, or being young and male and African American to begin with.

...back to Zimmerman, though. So the details that are emerging about George Zimmerman reveal a person who was one of these types of cops to the core. Every person he interacted with who wasn't clearly a part of some law enforcement agency or wealthy and white was a suspect. Any individual he fixated on was guilty until proven innocent, and he would never allow some paltry little facts to get in his way. He walked around looking for a fight, and some means of soothing/boosting his ego. His view of himself as a "good guy" was so central to his identity that it drove him to irrational and sinister extremes.

This Zimmerman guy - he's scary. At this point, a lot of Americans are realizing how scary he is. But what's more scary is that hundreds of thousands of others who are remarkably similar to him in profound ways patrol the streets and prisons of America every day. People who's ego needs salving, who find reassurance of their strength only by using the constructs of the police and prison system as a weapon against others whom they have personally deemed to be of little or no value to society. The fact that our law enforcement and penal systems attract and encourage these types? That is a serious problem that we face as a nation and that will continue to produce collateral damage in the form of broken bodies and ruined lives.

On Apologies

I generally avoid writing anything about Rush Limbaugh, because really, he knows who he is, we know who he is, he's not going to change, his fans aren't likely to change... so what's the point. But his apology for calling Sandra Fluke a slut and a prostitute got me thinking. Not about him so much, but about apologies in general.

What is it about an apology, and what are the conditions an apology must take place in, in order for us to take it seriously and accept it? This is interesting to me primarily because of my interest in forgiveness, and what both apologies and forgiveness do for both the wronged and wronging parties. But it's also interesting because of the role that public apologies play in our public life. It seems like in this age of electronic communication, what you say travels so far so fast, that the likelihood that any given public figure will find themselves issuing an apology at some point is very high.

In this case, Limbaugh has a pretty good incentive to make an apology. With sponsors of his radio show bailing left and right, he made this statement (via Politico) yesterday

“I always tried to maintain a very high degree of integrity and independence on this program. Nevertheless, those two words were inappropriate, they were uncalled for, they distracted from the point that I was actually trying to make, and I again sincerely apologize to Miss Fluke for using those two words to describe her. I do not think she is either of those two words.”

Limbaugh went on to reassure us that his apology was "heartfelt" and "sincere."

First, if you have to explicitly reassure people that your apology is sincere, we probably have good reason to suspect its sincerity to begin with. He doth protest too much and all that. But beyond that, we have reason to doubt the sincerity of his apology in general. If a person is apologizing for something he said which was 1) consistent in every way with his worldview and character, and 2) the kind of thing he's highly likely to say again in the future if he thinks he can get away with it, then why would we take his apology seriously? It's not that there's anything wrong with this apology itself. There's none of the doublespeak and passive-aggressive tone that some apologies have that make them so unbelievable. In this case it's purely a matter of context.

Rush, we believe you that you're sincerely sorry that you're getting some heat and losing advertising dollars over this one. That regret is clearly heartfelt and sincere. Regret about what you actually said? Not so much. The deeper lesson here (for you and everyone else) is that what makes an apology believable and constructive goes well beyond content. Sometimes context is everything.

Blast from the Past: Own your Space

Originally posted on Feministing way back in the day (December 2008), and still earning me the occasional hatemail....

Own Your Space!

This semester I had several female volleyball players in one of the classes I teach. They were all very tall, physically powerful, intelligent, well-read, and confident. But you never would have guessed by the way they carried themselves – in the hunched over semi-apologetic manner that tall women are supposed to have in our culture. As if being a tall woman is an offense to all the men you encounter who are shorter than you, so you have to hunch your shoulders down, duck your head, and keep your elbows close to your sides so as to not harm any male egos. This attitude is not new to me, being tall myself, but it irritates me that tall women are still made to feel this way. Obviously they’ve internalized the cultural message that it’s inappropriate for women to take up so much physical space and be imposing in any way.

A few years ago I researched this topic and read a number of studies on gendered use of personal space for a paper I was writing. It’s an interesting topic. Generally speaking, the use of personal space matches a person’s social status. So when two people interact, the one with higher status is more likely to invade the personal space of the other. Of course, this follows gender lines, and men use more space than women and are more likely to invade the personal space of a woman. One study used hidden cameras in train and bus stations in Europe to show that when women are sitting on a bench they keep their arms folded, elbows tightly at their sides, knees together, etc in order to minimize the space they need, while men sprawl out on the bench, spread their arms on the back of the bench, extend their legs out, even if their knees end up invading the space of a woman sitting next to them, etc. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve experienced this on an airplane, where the man next to me thought it was pre-ordained that the arm rest and half of the floor space in front of my seat belonged to him. A similar study looked at men and women walking in public spaces. When the path of a man and woman are going to cross, it’s always the woman who’s expected to alter her path to avoid a collision. In addition, women restrict their stride as compared to men, and tend to hunch their shoulders and not initiate or maintain eye contact.

So after I did this research my friends and I started messing around with this. We found that if you don’t alter your path when walking toward a man, a lot of men will almost run right into you, or bump their shoulder against yours, and then turn and give you this weird look. The weird looks you get are increased if you stand up straight with squared shoulders and take longer strides. I habitually walk this way now, and I continue to get puzzled looks by men who turn around after I pass them and watch me with an uncertain look. Part of it is because I’m fairly tall and refuse to hunch over or refrain from wearing boots with a heel (which make me 6’1″) if I feel like it. But also, if it’s not easy or the most natural for me to alter my path, I don’t. Oftentimes the man will have more space on his side of the sidewalk and I would have to step off onto the grass, or pause and wait for him to pass me first. I refuse. This really does bring strange reactions from men, but I don’t think they quite understand what seems so strange to them. Hence the puzzled looks. I also insist on owning my space in bars and restaurants where women are expected to yield their space, and I don’t shrink from eye contact or look away first. The strange thing is, once men get over the puzzled reaction, the usual response is fascination (except for the really insecure ones who feel threatened). But I see this as more than a fun social experiment (and now a habitual way of carrying myself). I think it’s subversive for women to abandon the sexist expectations to which they’ve been socialized to conform. By challenging these profound but unspoken signs of dominance and hierarchy, you can defy sexist attitudes every day without even being aware of it anymore. And that kind of kicks ass, in my view. So my challenge to feminists is to own your space. Become aware of how you sit/stand/walk/make eye contact, and stake your claim. A few weird looks from men isn’t going to hurt you, and it’s amazing how moving through the world in a confident manner changes your own self-conception over time.

Video of the day

Feminist parenting: arguing with your kids

Happy New Year, y'all.

As you may remember, I have a thing against making New Year's Resolutions, but I was sorta thinking that I should try to crank out one real post a week in 2012. We'll see how that goes.

So here's something I've been thinking about:

Over at the NPR blogs there's a piece about how kids who are in the habit of arguing in a productive way with their parents are better at resisting peer pressure. It's definitely worth a read.

Of course this isn't surprising to me. I think having good arguing skills (of the non-flaming, non-drama-queen type) is a basic life skill that will benefit you in many areas of your life. On the other hand, I can definitely see that raising kids who think they have a voice and who will argue (respectfully) with you is more work than just reverting to the classic because-I-said-so style of parenting. But I think it's integral to their developing sense of autonomy, and their critical thinking skills in general, so it seems worth it.

I've also been thinking about the value of being good at arguing with the people in your life in a productive way in another context. I have this friend who is incredible in many ways. He's smart and funny and artistically talented and witty and thoughtful and super fun to be around. But... from time to time he does this thing where he allows some small conflict with someone in his life to build up to the point where he just suddenly goes off on them (usually in email form) and says terribly hurtful things, completely ending his friendship with them, leaving no room for backtracking or starting over or mending fences. There's no room for dialogue, and the hurtful things that have been said can't be taken back. It's a complete burning bridges approach that's puzzling to me given this guy's social skills in general. To say the least, this has cost him pretty big over the course of his adult life, and caused a great deal of turmoil and hurt feelings among our friends.

When my great-grandma (the one with 13 kids) was in her 90s, someone asked her what the secret to a good marriage was. She said "knowing when to shut up." There is a lot of truth to this, I think, but in some cases, knowing when to address conflict before it becomes a blowing-up-and-burning-bridges scenario is more important. My dad has said a few times before: the most important relationship skill is knowing how to argue without saying things you can't take back, and without tearing down the person with whom you disagree. I would add that not discussing things when you're too worked up emotionally is probably a good skill to develop too.

So how do you teach your kids how to do this? I suppose by modeling the skills on a daily basis. By engaging in productive arguments that focus on the activities or events in question rather than making personal attacks or engaging in emotional blackmail. By not rewarding drama queen behavior, but being willing to compromise when kids stake out a reasonable position in a calm and persuasive way.

As far as I can tell, this is a crucial part of feminist parenting.

Anyone wanna argue with me about that?

Comic of the Day

Video of the Day

In honor of the most wonderful time of the year.

As a service to the corporatocracy, I would like to remind you that your family won't know you love them unless you embark on a crazed, irrational buying frenzy this weekend which will cause your stress level to spike through the roof, drive your family deeper into debt, and cause serious longterm environmental degradation. Hopefully your crazed consumer frenzy started today. It really should have started yesterday, it turns out. And if you don't get on it this weekend, you're doomed. Cheers!






The lyrics:
All the garbage that you have thrown away
Is waiting somewhere a million miles away
Your condoms and your VCR
Your ziploc bags and father's car
Dark and silent it waits for you ahead

So much garbage will never ever decay
And all your garbage will outlive you one day
You should sign a fancy signature to your messy messy portraiture
Because dark and silent it waits for you ahead
Making so much garbage each and every day
We make this shit for you to throw away
In plastic rooms in factories for you to dispose of as you please
Because dark and silent it waits for you ahead

With stomachs full of oil and vinegar
Stomachs full of oil and vinegar
With stomachs full of oil and vinegar hey hey
With stomachs full of oil and vinegar
Stomachs full of oil and vinegar
With stomachs full of oil and vinegar hey hey

La la la la
La la la la la la la la
La la la la
La la la la la la la la
La la la la
La la la la la la la la

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Friday

In honor of the weekend, a drink recipe.

Dump a bunch of ice in a glass. Squeeze a whole lemon and dump it in.


Add 2 shots of whiskey. Not Jack Daniels. Some other decent whiskey.




Add a squirt of agave nectar and top it off with a splash of cold filtered water. Stir it all up.

Best whiskey sour ever.


Happy Friday

Video of the Day

The sponsors of American Idol are trying to forcibly remove this video from Youtube, so you should probably watch it and see what has them so freaked out:



via My Plastic-Free Life

College football, the Catholic church, same difference

So, it's not really a secret that I like college football. I mean, I really like college football. And I feel conflicted about that.

On the one hand, there's my childhood experience of college football. When I was a kid, college football was a central part of the transition from summer to fall each year. Most Saturdays would find me in Husky Stadium with my dad and uncle and siblings and cousins (or getting up insanely early and driving to Eugene or Corvallis or Pullman for away games). We'd meet up late morning at my cousins' house, stuff our pockets with snacks, and head toward the stadium with the crowd of other fans heading down the Burke-Gilman trail. We would walk through the fall leaves or gray drizzle, carrying piles of umbrellas, ponchos, hats, mittens, and my dad's famous solution to the rain getting your jeans and shoes wet - a long roll of clear plastic to unroll over the whole row of laps, resulting in many admonitions from the adults to sit still already, you're knocking the plastic on the ground. Needless to say this made The Wave a little problematic. During away games that were too far to drive to, we collected at whichever house had the best football-watching tv at the time and watched the game there. Most Christmas vacations there was a bowl game to go to. We all knew the vocabulary, strategy, roster, conference politics, etc and could discuss them fluently. So yeah, a central part of my childhood that involved a lot of bonding and fond memories.

On the other hand, there's the culture of college football. And football in general. And club sports in general. Case in point: Penn State. First, you have a hierarchical structure where careers ride on wins and losses and revenue brought in. For a graduate assistant coach, being a whistle blower is a career-ending move. The very machinery that you are hitching your career wagon to will grind you up in a heartbeat if you buck the system and step outside the clear but implicit code of (mis)conduct. Then there's the reluctance of the administration to do a goddamn thing to prevent serious ethical breaches and abuses as long as the program is doing what the program is supposed to do - win games and make money. After all, involving the police and bringing charges against people is really bad PR. Better to sweep it all under the rug. What's the rape of a few 10 year-olds when $68 million a year is at stake? Collateral damage.

And so I distrust college football, because it's a patriarchal institution driven by a warped set of values, which isolates itself in order to maintain the fucked up culture that results from these values, and somehow manages to maintain its privileged status in spite of repeated instances of misconduct and abuse. And what does this all remind us of? The Catholic church, perhaps?

Right. You could take that sentence and replace "college football" with "the church" and it would perfectly capture the issue. Like this:

I distrust the church,* because it's a patriarchal institution driven by a warped set of values, which isolates itself in order to maintain the fucked up culture that results from these values, and somehow manages to maintain its privileged status in spite of repeated instances of misconduct and abuse.

Note that I say "the church" here instead of "the Catholic church" because I think the abuses rampant in the Catholic church are just the most widespread and visible abuses of their kind. You might remember that the church I grew up in, which was decidedly not Catholic, was a great environment for abuse as well. Obviously the values that drive the institution and allow for the abuses are different, but the same dynamic is at play.

So I think that isolating a couple of scapegoats at Penn State and publicly excoriating them is kind of a joke. Way too little; way too late. Until we take a step back and really examine the culture and practices of the institution, we can expect to see one instance of misconduct after another. Nothing will change. Patriarchal, hierarchical institutions will always choose to sacrifice individuals and engage in self-protective behavior to preserve their own culture and practices, and maintain their privileged status. That's the way it works. That’s what it means to be a patriarchal institution. What did we expect already?



*Of course it's true that not all churches fit this description, and in fact there are some churches that make an effort to prioritize the needs of individuals over that of the institution. But I still think this is the exception rather than the rule. Generally speaking, the institutional nature of a church results in a tendency to pursue practices that are protective of the institution first, even if this comes at a cost to individual members.

Three quickies and a Monday song

One
I've always thought it's unfortunate that the culture in which abstinence and purity rhetoric dominates is also one in which sexual dysfunction is covered up or accepted as a fact of life. Of course, this is the culture I grew up in, and I can tell you that talking honestly and openly about sex is strongly discouraged. Any indication of a lack of fulfillment from sex within marriage is viewed as a sign of selfishness, or an "impure heart." I've always thought this was a recipe for disaster. First you make sex taboo, and teach young people to avoid all sexual contact, sexual behavior, and even sexual thoughts (good luck with that) until marriage. Then miraculously these two people who are completely sexually inexperienced, and most likely have some huge psychological walls built up around the very concept of sex, are supposed to magically have awesome, mutually-fulfilling sex on their wedding night, and for the next 50 years. Right. I mean, not only is there the inexperience factor, but there's also all the rhetoric about impurity, where a woman (especially) who has had premarital sex is dirty and less valuable in some way. So if sex makes you dirty before you're married, and you spend 18 years associating sexual contact with pollution and degradation, how do you magically "flip the switch" overnight and go to thinking of it as a positive, fulfilling thing?

The prohibition on discussing sexual dissatisfaction within marriage is a such a central mechanism in the purity and abstinence machinery that it's encouraging to see advice columns like this: The Monotony of Monogamy: I married my first sexual partner, and now I’m itching to cheat, where the more likely trajectory is openly discussed. Not that it will change much, but there it is.


Two

When my daughter got out of the bath the other night, she left these two sitting on the side of the tub. I've been wondering what they were talking about ever since.


Three
In a recent Science article, The Pseudoscience of Single-Sex Schooling, much of the data that has been used to support single-sex schooling is debunked, and some of the truly significant problems surrounding segregated schooling are discussed. It's totally worth a read.


And finally, a Monday song.