In the most breathtaking analogy of the month year, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus claims that saying the GOP is waging a war on women is like saying they're waging a war on caterpillars. Because everyone knows that Republican dudes are so obsessed over the physical autonomy and reproductive practices of caterpillars that they're losing sleep over it. Oh wait, no. That's the physical autonomy and reproductive practices of women that they're so obsessed with. I remember now.
Amina Filali had a big problem. Under Moroccan law, the 16 year-old girl was forced to marry her rapist in order to protect her honor. By which we mean her family's honor. After several months of marriage, during which her new husband beat her regularly and her mother advised her to be patient, Amina solved the problem the only way she could. She swallowed rat poison.
Meanwhile, smug Americans - the socially conservative and right-wing extremists among them - clutch their pearls and Tsk Tsk over those barbaric Muslims and their mistreatment of women. But when it comes right down to it, the views of socially conservative Americans are of a piece with laws and policies which require women to marry their rapists in order to preserve their family's honor. The common theme is this: it is a woman's responsibility to sacrifice her own well-being and autonomy to protect and maintain the family. No matter what the cost. Her economic, physical, emotional, sexual and social well-being can never trump the interests of her family.
So maybe the vocabulary is different. Maybe the socially conservative crowd refers to it as "a woman's calling" rather than "her family's honor." But underneath it all, it's the exact same idea.
The difference is, in Morocco they have the balls to come right out and say that a woman's well-being, interests, and desires don't and shouldn't factor in. Wouldn't it be refreshing if social conservatives in America would do the same?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
