Bringing Children into a Mad World

I'm incredibly excited to present the final guest blog post during January's exploration of patriarchy: Dr. Rae Colley, formerly a professor at the University of West Georgia and presently my esteemed colleague. She's a deep thinker on the issues we've probed this month (her dissertation was entitled "Domesticating the Frontier: Representations of Native Americans in U.S. Women's Prose, 1820-1885"). You can read her literary criticism on her blog, Read This Book, Y'all. Below you will find a heartwarming and hilarious exploration of someone who identifies as a feminist and who has raised both daughters and sons.

My first experience wrangling with the concept of patriarchy occurred some years ago (I won’t say how many, because my commitment to feminism does not diminish my commitment to personal vanity) when I was a graduate student at Emory University in Atlanta. I was a young Ph.D. candidate in English, and I thought I would like to earn a certificate in Women’s Studies. Also, I was recently married. And, shortly after making that fateful decision, pregnant. But nevertheless, I wanted to fight the power of the male gaze and began taking classes in Women’s Studies, where I produced papers entitled, “The Hegemony of the Governess: (Re)inscribing the Patriarchy in Anne Bronte’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.” I love this title because it contains so many of the academic markers of the day: parentheses, dependent clauses, and of course a colon.  [Side note: this paper was a finalist that year for Most Outstanding Paper by a Graduate Student. It didn’t win, and to this day I wonder if I invested too heavily or not enough in the academic markers.]

At the time (ok, fine, it was the mid 90s) I was proud of my commitment to feminism. A professor of mine wrote a newspaper editorial arguing that everyone who was in favor of equal pay for equal work was a feminist, and I couldn’t really argue with her logic (mainly because I didn’t know what the hell she was talking about when she mentioned an Aristotelian paradigm of something or other). I strutted into my Emory class on Women in American Popular Culture full of ideas about how to elevate popular culture (occupied by women) into the stratosphere of intellectual culture (occupied by men.) My pregnancy was a frequent topic of discussion in my all-female class of varying gender identities.  My child was born in June, and when I returned to class in September, everyone was eager to hear about my new daughter. The only problem was that she was a son. I don’t mean that the baby was transgendered or confused about his gender identity (to my knowledge). Rather, in our enthusiastic reimagining of American popular culture, everyone had imagined a culture that included another open-minded young woman. I was so proud of my perfect baby boy and not a little offput when a classmate jokingly [I think] moaned, “Not another member of the patriarchy!”

I laughed, but then immediately began to worry: how would I prevent my innocent baby boy from joining the tidal wave of repressive male power? I thought I had the answer. I would not play into restrictive gender stereotypes! My boy would not play with guns or swords or army men! He would have a Barbie doll, and he would play dress-up! I would buy him a Baby Alive and teach him to change her diaper! He would wear pink, for heaven’s sake! While he was a swaddled infant, it was relatively easy to enforce these strictures. He wore his cute pink onesies with aplomb, and threw up on them just as efficiently as he did on the blue clothes. He gnawed on the Barbie’s shaved head when his teeth were coming in, and he actually asked for a Ken doll on his second birthday (I still don’t know if he knew I was going to get him one anyway, or if he genuinely wanted a tanned partner for Malibu Barbie. Or two Malibu Kens).

In the midst of all my self-congratulatory gender reassignment exercises, I became pregnant again, and this time to the delight of Women’s Studies students everywhere, I had a little girl. I knew what to do: regift her pink clothes and baby dolls to her brother, and make sure she had a full supply of Thomas the Tank Engine books and action figures. A funny thing happened here: Grace exhibited no interest whatsoever in her brother’s collection of Matchbox cars, and the only thing she liked to do with Thomas the Tank Engine was wrap him up in a blanket and pretend to rock him to sleep. To be clear, Thomas is a train. And he was swaddled nicely in a Barbie blanket. At least I think the blanket was a nice, gender-neutral yellow. More horrifying, despite my desire to avoid firearms of all kinds, my son Jackson had a real knack for weapon formation. He could make a gun out of a stick, a pencil, a shoe; he was a regular little Smith and Wesson MacGyver. And he quickly lost interest in the Malibu Ken that he had requested [accepted?] the previous year.

Over the years, my children have accepted and rejected gender norms in varying degrees: Grace never did enjoy the toy trucks I bought her, and I eventually had to cave in and buy her an American Girl doll to replace Thomas the Tank Engine. Jackson enjoyed dolls intermittently, but once he discovered Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles that was all over. And to my immense chagrin, he has always loved guns: Airsoft rifles, BB guns, and violent video games. There, I said it. However, for years he played with the kitchen set I bought them, and now he’s studying to be a chef. My daughter is president of her school’s Business and Entrepreneurial Club, and is a master at outside sales (I myself could never even sell Girl Scout cookies). What does all this mean? Maybe nothing. Maybe everything.

This entire post has been one long piece of anecdotal evidence about my experience trying to carry the banner of feminism as a mother, first of boys, then of girls (I now am the proud mother of two beneficiaries of the patriarchy and two future breastfeeding advocates [optimism reigns here]). Society has changed a lot in the years since I earned that elusive Ph.D./Women’s Studies certificate, although maybe not so much as my classmates and I would like to believe. We are nearing the end of Barack Obama’s second term as the first African-American president, but we are also forced to listen to debate on how the infidelities of Hillary Clinton’s husband disqualify her from the presidency. Not to veer off into the political, but the personal is political, or so I’ve come to believe. I wanted to end with a pithy quote, but when I went to Tumblr, I kept getting distracted by the vitriolic comments and hate-mongering under each quote. Why is feminism such a dirty word to some? I did find one quotation that spoke to my story, though, from Gloria Steinem: “Though we have the courage to raise our daughters more like our sons, we’ve rarely had the courage to raise our sons more like our daughters.” Here’s to a judgment-free, egalitarian childhood, with all the dolls, trucks, cake pans, and sword-wielding turtles that implies!

Donna Haraway: Rise of the Cyborgs

Stop Number Three on our tour of voices lifted against patriarchy takes us even deeper into the depths of feminist literature and identity to consider the work of scholar Donna Haraway.  Where bell hooks views resistance to oppression as the building of coalitions between people with broad intersections of identity categories, Haraway resists the idea that categories and intersections have any validity at all - that there is no "being a female" as such.  From Haraway's perspective, the female experience (like all experiences) is constructed on the social, cultural, and scientific level and exists only in our imaginations as a platonic form, rather than an immutable fact.  And that's ok.

A Fusion of Dissimilar Elements

Haraway gained the most renown with the publication of her Cyborg Manifesto in the early eighties, which is an amazing metaphor expressing a very sophisticated idea.  With demagogic flourish, she forcefully makes the following point: there is no single feminism because there is no singular female experience.  There may not even be any aspects of female experience that apply to all people that self-identify as females.  However, Haraway does not see this as a problem for feminists: rather, it is an asset.  In the same way that cyborgs in science fiction transcend the limitations of both their organic and metallic components, feminists can transcend the limitations of their own limited perspectives by amalgamating the diverse body of perspectives that consider themselves feminist.  The goal is no longer assimilation, or even reconciliation; it isn't necessary to hash out a general understanding that creates internal consistency between different advocates against patriarchy.  

“The cyborg is a creature in a post-gender world; it has no truck with bisexuality, pre-oedipal symbiosis, unalienated labour, or other seductions to organic wholeness through a final appropriation of all the powers of the parts into a higher unity.” 

That is to say, working to construct the perfect feminism doesn't have to be a prerequisite to toppling patriarchy.  We can accept and move past the fractured nature of resistance (inevitably fractured because none of us can let go of the notion of divisive identity), and instead focus on our shared affinity - abhorrence of oppressive power structures.

Existential Horror

There are many wonderful authors of feminist literature in the world, but I chose Donna Haraway today because I think that her particular advocacy is emblematic in the differences in thinking that can arise when we suspend the demands for structural rationality that grow from the old order of knowing and organizing our knowledge.  At different points this month I've blogged about the ways that our understanding of the world (science, medicine, etc.) has not developed in a neutral, humanistic vacuum.  All of history is tainted by the arc of historical development that has concentrated power and influence in the hands of men, and has enabled these men to frame our social expectation for acceptable argument in ways that make it difficult to uproot the status quo.

Donna Haraway doesn't care about any of that.  Her argument disregards those logical demands (that all feminists should agree on what feminism is); she rejects them on face and calls them what they are - not inherently necessary elements of truth, but rather conditions imposed by the existing social order.  In that sense, Haraway's work is not only a beautifully evocative metaphor, but also a challenge to patriarchal power structures by the virtue of its very construction.

bell hooks: I'll meet you at the crossroads

Humble gift though it is, today I'd like to give my appreciation and draw hopefully simultaneously draw more attention to the scholarly work of one of the authors of the twentieth and twenty-first century who has been successful at making the conversation around feminism and patriarchy bigger.  Today we discuss bell hooks.

Standing at the center of the oppressive panopticon

For those of you who may be less conversant in feminist literature, bell hooks is a scholar that's been writing important texts since the seventies.  Before she was an academic, however, she was one daughter of a working class family in Kentucky that lived through the insult of segregated education and the trauma of integration.  Indeed, the confluence of multiple oppressive systems in her life primed hooks to significantly broaden the feminist conversation - bell understands intuitively the way that capitalism, racism and patriarchy function in a mutually supportive way to preserve the fundamental distribution of power in the status quo.  She made an argument for intersectionality - an understanding of identity that expands beyond the singular explanation to consider the dynamics interactions that shape people and movements.  

As a black feminist, bell experienced (perhaps still experiences) marginalization; she identified the toxic way that many conversations about gender equality entrench other forms of oppression, either by devaluing voices that come from outside of the center of the movement or deprioritizing issues that particularly affect members of the movement who have other overlapping identities.  For instance, one might argue that when Chris Rock attacked Jennifer Lawrence by comparing her struggle to the arguably more significant struggle of black female actors, he was raising an issue of intersectional feminism, challenging the idea that there is a singular collection of "women's issues" that impact all women equally (I critiqued the tenor of Rock's response as divisive to broader movements against oppression, but that doesn't mean it isn't a conversation worth having).  A strong alternative to oppressive power structures should be radically open to all voices.

Many people on the left aren't crazy about scholars like hooks that critique the state of activist movements; they perceive such scholarship as nitpicking or inflexible idealism that sacrifices the good in the name of the perfect.  I would argue that such attitudes are a replication of the same oppressive structures that movements try to combat.  I've criticized patriarchal institutions and world views for privileging certain forms of knowledge or certain modes of thoughts, and movements that don't value a diversity of voices and experiences are a micro-political reproduction of exactly the same thing.  bell hooks and her ideological successors are the post-modern vanguard intent on guaranteeing that as movements gradually collapse the old power structures, the new world that emerges will actually be better than the one it replaces.

To put it another way, a feminism that seeks only to make women equal in standing to men will inevitably fail, because not all men are equal to each other.  Racism and capitalism elevate the rights and protections that some men receive, and a meaningful challenge to that inequality cannot neglect other systemic oppressions to focus only on one.  It's a failing strategy and it fractures the coalition of humanity whose common interest is positive global transformation.

Bowie's Challenge to Heteronormativity: Turn and Face the Strange

Last week I considered some aspects of conducting activism in opposition to one of the most significantly engrained power binaries of human culture.  Now,as our month-long exploration of patriarchy winds down, I thought it might be nice to turn our gaze on a few figures that have made a significant (and I would argue positive) impact on the tenor of cultural conversations that take place around the intersections of gender, biology and power in our society.  What better place to start than by paying homage to a recently deceased icon that launched a pivotal challenge to people's normative perceptions of gender and sexuality: David Bowie.

Free Your Mind and Your Androgyny

Pressing an album on whose cover he appeared in a dress (The man who sold the world) was only a token of the totalistic way that Bowie's amorphous persona challenged the dogma of gender roles: an obviously identifiable trope that represented a deeper rejection of category that pervaded all things Bowie.  His physical features, his fashion choices, his language and mannerisms both drew from the hypermasculine (metal-riveted leather jackets and bulging codpieces) and the hyperfeminine (glitter, feathered blowouts and skin-tight leotards).  I think Bowie was the first truly mainstream figure that brought this type of gender-bending image to the fore; he was dangerous because he was a living manifestation of the message when radically masculine and feminine characteristics were both embraced, the result was not a failure or a cancellation (something like Pat from MadTV), but instead a potent summation of eclectic elements of human potential.  Bowie was amazing because he lived such contradictions effortlessly, dismissing the difficulty that the normal mind attaches to the liminal spaces that live between our well-defined notions.  Before Bowie, imagining the kind of male-female amalgam that he would become might have been well beyond the pale of many suburban imaginations.  With his establishment as a household name, people had a reference point to anchor their newly expanded imaginings about the range of the possible, and perhaps even the desirable when it came to enforcing particular gender traits on children with particular biological sexes.

What made Bowie particularly insidious, at least from the perspective of the dominant order, was the unapologetic element of his idiom.  Despite being so far ahead of the curve, despite challenging so significantly what many may have considered "normal", he refused to endorse others' frustration and confusion by giving it substance.  He lived in a world where normalcy was defined by his own perceptions of what a better world might look like, and with the force of his passion and his personality he shook the way that others looked at the world.  He knew that he, the emperor, was the only one wearing clothes, and his unflappable assurance that this was the case despite the indignation of so many of his naked subjects is what allowed him to pave the wave for futures icons like Prince to further blur the lines of identification that are used to normalize and substantiate roles of subservience and dominance in our patriarchal society.

We can all take a page out of Ziggy's playbook.  Live in a better world, and when you encounter others whose worldviews have been detrimentally polluted with prejudices and entitled expectations, invite them to leave all of that behind and join you in a better place.

Theories of Feminism: An Intergenerational Conversation

We have another incredibly special post today! The second guest blog of the year was put together by  veteran educator Holly Chesser.  The conversation below took place in a facebook chat between Holly and her former student Jennifer Gerson Uffalussy.  In decades past, Holly was Jennifer's eighth grade teacher.  Now, Jennifer is a writer publishing on a wide variety of issues including reproductive and women's health.  She contributes to The Guardian and Yahoo! among others, and is one of the founding editors of Jezebel.com.

Holly Chesser

HRC: Ok, so as I mentioned before, my friend asked me to write about patriarchy. Initially,  I was going to write about the varied treatment of women and men in politics. Abuse heaped on Hillary Clinton (and by the way, Nikki Haley now because she opened her mouth) tends to demean them sexually: the uninspired, common “dumb whore,”  “stupid slut,” “crazy bitch” that women have endured for years. Critics of Trump and Jeb may have nothing nice to say about the two, but they don’t “reach below the belt” for their choice terms. But I decided against writing that blog post because I didn’t want to spend any time thinking about people who think or talk that way about women.  Instead, I had an exchange with a student that took my thinking down a different path. One of my students asked me if I am a feminist. I responded, “Of course, I’m a woman. Why wouldn’t I be a feminist?” She sorta rolled her eyes and commented, “Burn your bra and all that.” I retorted, “No, equal pay and respect and all that.” Her dismissiveness of feminism made me wonder if there is a generational divide that I had just encountered and couldn’t appreciate. I have to regularly remind this young woman that her skirt is too short, a dress code infraction. She’s a little sassy in a very likable way and generally has the last word – like telling me that she’s sorry if what she’s wearing is disturbing the boys. I’ve quite literally had to tell her that I don’t think anyone in the building should know the color of her underwear simply because they are following her up the stairs. So, what am I missing? Some might argue that my behavior towards her qualifies as “slut shaming,” but does it? Shouldn’t we all keep our privates private? You’re a former student, roughly 20 years younger than I.  Help me understand.

Jennifer Uffalussy

JGU: I think we have to start by breaking these into a few separate issues, the two biggest being the unfortunate resistance that young women feel about the word "feminist" (help us, Beyonce!), and then the separate issue of so-called slut-shaming.  And I should qualify all of this with the fact that a high school student would probably think I am old and out of touch too since I now graduated almost 15 years ago. The issues are linked for me, and I believe for you, too -- but I think for many young women in particular, they are not -- which probably brings us to them resisting the whole feminist label to begin with. I really wish I knew why feminist is a bad word. Because, like you said, to me it's like, “Hi -- do you believe that you have the right to make your own choices? Do you think human beings should, inherently, be thought of as equals? Because then you _should_ then say you believe in feminism.”

HRC: But I wonder if young women resist the word "feminism" because they equate that word with lesbianism, with challenging men, with strength. And they don't want to be viewed in those terms. They don't want to be viewed as aggressive, which of course is nonsense. Nonsense, as in lesbians, challenge, and strength are not inherently aggressive.

JGU: (Though of course this brings us to the whole other issue of "white feminism" vs "intersectional feminism" -- ideally, the word feminism would, be default, imply intersectional feminism. It often does not. That is also part of the problem. It reminds me of a college professor I had once who asked us all to define the word feminist and I told her I thought defining the word was anti-feminist.) But I don’t know, perhaps for your student -- I wonder if it's just more granny-ish. like, “ugh the olds are into the feminism.”

HRC: "The olds”? Please tell me that won't catch on. If it becomes a hashtag, I'm going to assume it's a misspelling.  It seems to me that many young women want to define their power through their sexuality. Isn't that a throwback to the old dichotomy: men assert strength through physical power and women through sex?

JGU: No promises on “the olds.” I wonder too if some of the problem ("problem") is with a lack of conversation happening -- in homes, in school, among peers -- about the relationship between gender and sexuality. Because, for me, it's really important to not qualify feminism as a "women's issue" -- though of course women's issues are part of feminism. We just need more discourse on gender _and_ sexuality. And marginalization and otherness.

HRC: Yes, I think you're right because in schools gender is a word used in biology and sexuality is used in health class.

JGU: And both of those words are complicated in their own right! And we need to talk about that! Maybe this is wishful thinking, but maybe younger women would be less resistant to the idea of feminism if they realized how messy and amorphous it really is. And how if you care about bodies and performance and also about equal pay and who has the right to tell you what you can and cannot do with your own body -- that's all part of feminism.

HRC: At the beginning of the year, I engaged with my students in a discussion about rape on college campuses. We talked about the desire to explore independence from one’s parents and the need to protect oneself. One of the boys asked what role dressing or dancing provocatively played in rape. Does the woman have any responsibility to protect herself?

JGU: Campus rape is another topic like dress code where I think the issues get muddled a lot -- But to me, it comes down to -- no one is "asking for it." If a girl wanted to hang out naked all the time, good for her. But it would not be an invitation for assault or objectification, even. And I think that's where your dress code question comes up.

HRC: Naked in a public place or even at a party? Isn't there a difference between the ideal and the pragmatic here?

JGU: There is a phenomenal academic at the University of New Hampshire, Sharyn Potter, doing research on what she is calling "bystander culture" -- The idea that communities have to understand accountability. And that if you saw someone who looked drunk to the point where they were no longer coherent, as a bystander you are obligated to intervene. It's on you. And that the real problem is that we aren't socializing children -- from the youngest age -- about bystander culture enough.  She always gives the example, which I love, of how her elementary school age daughter has a child in her class with a peanut allergy. But ALL the students know it is critical that they don't bring nuts to school. And they need to help watch out for the student too.

HRC: But I taught my daughter - now 24 - that she should never accept a drink from a boy at a party, never fill a cup from a barrel, always be with someone.

JGU: I mean, look who you are talking to. Safety first! But I don't think the two things cancel each other out. No one deserves to be raped. I don't care if you are blacked out drunk. And learning that in elementary school could in theory have a huge impact on how they grow up to think about "rape culture." If you see something, say something. And teaching consent in kindergarten even, too. We forget that age-appropriate sex ed is, in fact, age appropriate. For a kindergartener, that means asking if you can hug someone or hold their hand. And that is such an important lesson.

HRC: But rape is about power, right? 

JGU: Rape is definitely about power.

HRC: Right. So what's that about? Why is rape prevalent on college campuses? I don't know the statistics - whether it's increased or decreased. But I wonder why men feel the need to assert such power. What's going on there? Although men can be raped, the numbers pale in comparison. If patriarchy is about male power, what is the continuing role of rape about? I wonder if - and believe me I'm not assigning blame to women at all - rape is so prevalent because women are dressing more openly and behaving more provocatively and men are asserting their power. As in, "there are less of us on campuses these days because these damn women are so bright, and what's worse they are dressing sexy and asserting themselves, and by God they can't have both, so I'm going to assert my age-old vestige of power - I am going to sexually overcome them"? 

JGU: But this comes back to how we socialize young men. And these ultimately all come back to one person's word against the other. And certain people's words get privileged over others. Which again -- is where feminism comes into play.

HRC: But in the case of the UVA claim of rape, it wasn't rape.

JGU: UVA is so hard and so complicated too. (Full disclaimer: I know you went there!) Rolling Stone totally screwed up on every level of journalism. Like in every possible way. And I do think it is really really important to trust survivors, because one of the few things we do have hard data on is false reporting -- and it is so rare.  Not that it never happens. But so, so rare. So if someone says they have been assaulted, believe them.

HRC: Actually, initially I didn't defend the school at all. There is enormous entitlement there. The exposure of the story has been really sad to me. Not because I wanted it to be true - of course, no one should want that. But now the waters are considerably muddled. But it's ridiculous to think that one woman speaks for all women. Or one Muslim speaks for all Muslims. etc. etc. etc.

JGU: Absolutely! I honestly hurt for any victim of assault whose story is dismissed (that much quicker) because of what happened with Rolling Stone. And the onus is really on Rolling Stone there. The systems are just all bad too. The systems themselves are too deeply flawed. Internal adjudication means something different to every school. And there is so much murkiness with disclosure. (Like what happened with that Oregon case I reported on!)  We need Title IX reform and there are a lot of really smart young women advocating so hard. These two amazing young women started this 

group, Know Your IX.

HRC: Ok, so what about the word “slut”? What does it even mean anymore?

JGU: That is actually one of my favorite stories I wrote last year! 

HRC: It seems so many young women have appropriated the language of oppression like “slut” and “ho” in the same way that African Americans have taken ownership of the n-word. 

JGU: Ooh I don't know about that as a 1:1 comparison.

HRC: Last year, I had a young black man write a wonderfully satirical essay on the proper reparations for slavery: exclusive use of the "n" word. What makes you uncomfortable about the comparison?

JGU: I think the historical context of the terms is just too incomparable And the weight, even. You can say "slut" on network TV. And for fear of the whole "speaking for all women" thing -- I think -- I think! -- that women who use the word slut re:themselves and their peers aren't doing so within a larger socio-political narrative. But doing so because it's just what they're supposed to be -- to go back to your way earlier point -- women are taught they can assert power through sexuality in a world where they are not equal with men, so. As Tenenbaum puts in her book, then you can be "the good slut." You can perform the role correctly. You can be sexual but not too sexual, to be threatening but sexy enough so that you’re noticed but innocuous.

HRC: Oh, god, that's so complicated. Sexual but not too sexual? So, no nip slip?

JGU: Or maybe, a nip slip but not a crotch shot. Social media plays such a big part in it too! Because you can document your own performance

HRC: But that goes back to what I mean. Kim K's sex tape got her where she is today. But I'd argue she is nowhere.

***Long conversation between teacher and former student about Blanche Dubois, Lady Macbeth, Jane Eyre, Virginia Woolf – blah, blah, blah ****

JGU: But it's all about choice -- and not that feminism only means drowning yourself and cheating on your husband and abandoning your children -- but that you can make whatever kind of choice you want. And not feel like your only option is drowning yourself. Or, do! And feel cool about that choice, as well!

Conversation ended shortly thereafter because, as Jen wrote, - 

JGU: In 5ish minutes I have to go call the high school senior who asked Carly Fiorina about feminism (full circle!)

Questioning the Voice of Oppression

Yesterday I made the case that pushing people to stop taking actions that reinforce patriarchy (rather than condemn individuals for being patriarchal) is a key element when it comes to transforming our society through bottom-up activism.  But that begs a significant question: how do you get someone to stop taking patriarchal actions?To answer that question, I draw on my years of experience as an educator.

Inside Out

There are two general categories of motivation that drive all human behavior: extrinsic motivation (things that come from outside of you) and intrinsic motivation (things that come from inside of you.  In the educational context, grades, treats, rewards, etc. are all extrinsic motivators, while the desire to learn/understand is an intrinsic motivator.  So if your goal is to change someone's behavior, you have one of two choices - you can either change the set of consequences (i.e. extrinsic motivators) they experience for their choices, or you can try to get them to see the world differently and therefore feel differently about their decisions, thereby shifting their intrinsic motivations.

Since we're discussing ways to transform large scale power structures, that pretty much rules out changing the extrinsic motivators, at least in the short term.  Changing consequences for acting like a patriarchal jerk, at least on a large scale, requires authority and influence.  Passing laws, shifting broad social perceptions, and other steps like these that significantly shift peoples' extrinsic motivations might result in quick change, but if people that wanted to militate against patriarchy were already in positions of power, we probably wouldn't be in the position to discuss how to break it down...

So how do you get people to look at the world in a different way?

The Wisest of Us

It was thinking about the problem in that way that made me realize that getting people to look at the world in a different way is basically my day job.  I am a teacher.  I walk into my classroom and I pull a bunch of tricks out of my bag to get my students to question their conceptions and strive to understand the world more completely, so here's my two cents on how shake people's deeply held beliefs:

1. Start with questions.  Follow the example of Socrates.  If your goal is to change minds rather than score points, you're better off taking people out of a defensive frame of mind, and making them feel as if they're talking to a person that wants to understand them.  It's a fundamental aspect of the human condition.  Everyone wants to be understood.  Plus, this questioning serves a dual purpose - not only does it put the question recipient into a more pliable frame of mind, but it allows you to guide them to a point where they can test to what extent their beliefs about the world (or women and men and the ideal structure of society) are founded in factual observations.
2. Dig Deeper.  Don't ask just one question.  Peel back layer after layer.  Sexism, like most prejudices, is usually deeply engrained, and its ultimate origins are likely buried beneath accumulated layers of anger, frustration, and selective information absorption that tends to confirm one's own prejudices.
3. Be empathetic. The project of social transformation ultimately aims to include all members of the human community in a more loving, inclusive, supportive social arrangement, and that's not possible if the deviants that call the shots right now are all sentenced to excommunication.  Plus, I believe that all human actions, even the most horrible and condemnable, grow from real emotional experiences with which we can all empathize to some extent.  Connecting on that empathetic level is the key to getting someone to put down their weapons.
4. Don't bite off more than you can chew.  As mentioned above, prejudices dwell deep.  You probably won't convince some sexist jerk that he's been treating women like shit all his life and that might not be a good thing after a single conversation.  But you might tweak something just a tad that sheds a new light on an experience he has in the future.  And if he has a few conversations and experiences like that, then maybe he just will realize the error of his ways.

I'm advocating for a movement towards universal empathy that lacks the vicious satisfaction of the hyper-masculine revenge fantasy.  It isn't sexy in the conventional sense.  But we've been fixing the world in sexy ways for millennia, and look how messed up everything is now!  Pretty much every genuinely positive choice I've ever made (eating healthy, exercising, apologizing) has come with a period of painful adjustment where I've had to force myself to forego short-term gratification in the pursuit of a comprehensively better life.  Giving up on the idea of getting even and embracing the idea of getting better strikes me as the big-picture equivalent when it comes to activism for a better world.

Patriarchal Actors: Playing the Blame Game

It's Martin Luther King Jr. Day today in the United States, and that puts me in a frame of mind to reflect on how to push back against some of the injustices of our world, rather than simply documenting them.  Up to this point, TFP's month of patriarchy posts has consisted primarily of examples of the patriarchal, androcentric elements of our national and global culture.  This week, we turn instead to pondering the following question: What can we do about it???

For Monday, I'd like to offer the following suggestion: we need to shift the conversation so that instead of talking about patriarchal people, we should instead focus on patriarchal actions.  Activists and passionate people on both sides of the ideological spectrum have a strong tendency to demonize the people that disagree with them; I've certainly been guilty of this at times.  The accumulation of left-leaning publications that label Trump and his supporters as racists, sexists, xenophobes, etc. are a perfect example of this tendency.  On the flip side, Senator Cruz's statement about people from New York and their "New York Values" is a poignant demonstration of the same phenomenon from the right.

Never Beyond Salvation

The first reason that I think such a shift is absolutely essential if one actually cares about creating change in the long term is that when you attribute a characteristic to a person, it encourages a fixed mindset.  To say that someone is sexist implies that the characteristic is attached to them, perhaps connected to their identity, and it doesn't offer or invite any strategies to reduce sexism.  For people interested in fighting sexism, applying that label to other people sets up a battle for cultural control; one takes for granted that the enemy will always be the enemy, and the struggle to create change becomes a violent conflict where the only possible successful resolution involves conquering the enemy, either by removing them from positions of social influence or by eliminating them from society.

Long story short, if we always see "patriarchal" as an adjective that describes a person or persons, and we want society to be less patriarchal, the only option left is to do everything we can to destroy the power/prestige/life of said patriarchal persons.

I, for one, cannot get on board for this vision of change, both because I think it's a losing strategy (see below), and also because I don't think anyone's identity is fixed for all time.  Identity is a complex interaction of genetics and experiences, and I would venture to say that pretty much everyone has experienced an evolution of their own identity in certain ways over time.  I don't believe any bad person is truly beyond saving, and that requires a different perspective.  The logic of elimination that calls us to destroy those who disagree with us, that methodology grows from fascist, totalitarian roots, and I think it's fundamentally incompatible with the anti-patriarchal society I would like to see.

Deepening the Trenches

The second reason I think we should learn to understand "patriarchal" exclusively as an adverb that describes actions rather than people is that attacks on identity do not encourage offenders to change.  It's a fundamental psychological experience that we've probably all shared: when you feel like someone is attacking you, you become defensive, angry, reactionary.  You might double-down on the behavior that offended the other person in the first place, because you have been de-valued, and the natural reaction to such an experience is to aggressively protect yourself.

On the other hand, if someone's actions are critiqued, it doesn't necessarily trace back to that person's essential self.  We can feel guilty about our actions without being ashamed of ourselves as people, and that makes all the difference.  A critique of particular actions feels like the way forward to me both because it's more likely to prompt a meaningful discussion, AND it provides a template for change.  If a person understands a particular action to be bad, the solution is simple: don't do that thing anymore.  If enough people change enough individual actions and choices, then all of the sudden the world becomes a different place.

One Woman's Debate

Erin McCubbin (second from the left) participated in formal policy debate for four in high school, and four more at the collegiate level.  Three out of those four years, her partner and she competed at the NDT (think national championship for college debate).  Needless to say, she is a badass.  I asked her to reflect on the following question: How do you think being a woman influenced your experience as a policy debater?  Her amazing story follows.


Policy debate was fast. Being raised in an Italian­Yankee household taught me to speak quickly and loudly if I had an opinion. Policy debate was about the long game. The strategy and the partnership of it appealed to me. Growing up, my family read the paper together and talked about current issues at dinner. There was never a question in my mind that policy debate was the right path for me.

If you’ve ever been around me when the topic of policy debate came up, you know that I firmly believe that policy debate changed my life. Debate captivated me. It taught me that all voices need to be not just heard, but actively listened to. Debate showed me that trophies were shiny but the friendships forged through the late nights spent organizing expandos and perfecting that well­worn 2AC block never rusted. The conversations between rounds and outside of tournaments expanded my worldview in an undeniable way. Cross­country van rides perfected my ability to sleep in any situation and inoculated me against the smell of, well, everything.

But I did not learn those things in high school policy debate. Yes, I have friendships that 15 years later are still going strong from those times. But more often than not, I have painful memories of thinking I was never good enough.

“Policy debate is a man’s world. Why don’t you try IEs (individual events)?” As a girl raised with a ‘Girls Can Do Anything’ sign in her bedroom, I could not comprehend this statement. I remember staring back at my high school debate coach,­ a woman in her thirties at the time. Remorse fills me as I think about the potential mentor­-mentee relationship we could have shared. Instead, it was a competition from the start. Somewhere along the line, someone told her that she couldn’t cut it in the policy debate world and she listened. That choice, years later, would put me in the same pivotal conversation. Do I listen? She must be an expert since they pay her to coach, right?

Wrong. Thankfully, I didn’t listen. Instead, her confidence that I could not compete in policy debate strengthened my desire to do just that. By the end of high school, I reached Outstanding Distinction with the National Forensics League and had the opportunity to debate in college. While my high school coach tried to sabotage me along the way (in school suspension for borrowing a hairdryer on a debate trip from someone at another school comes to mind), I learned many valuable lessons. I had to manage my own time and preparation. I registered myself and my partner for debate tournaments. I learned how to pref judges and read brackets on my own. It was hard, but empowering. When new girls joined the team I mentored them instead of bullying them, regardless of which event they decided to compete in. Each time our coach told me that I couldn’t wear open toed shoes because they were distracting to the male judges or suggested that I only won a round because the college student judging thought I was attractive, I internalized it and moved on.

A coach from another local high school took me under her wing and showed me what it was like to have a coach on my side. I tried to model what she was to me to the younger girls on my team. Had it not been for her, I likely would have quit debate early on. She took my partner and I to tournaments when my coach couldn’t be bothered. She cheered me in every victory and, more importantly, in every defeat. She coached all of her debaters equally­­ and anyone who loved the activity as much as she did was ‘one of her debaters’.

Despite never traveling out of state and limited coaching, I made it to college debate on a substantial scholarship. College debate changed everything for me. My coaches were male and part of me was scared that it would be an amplified experience of my high school debate days. After my freshman year, I was even the only female on the debate team for a year. In those years, I was more loved, supported, and challenged than I ever thought possible. Once I got into college debate it was more about the craft than anything else; everyone who does policy debate in college is there for the same reason: the love of the game.

As a woman, of course my experience was a bit different than my male counterparts. Let me first say that I had many male and female mentors in the debate community during my college days. Nine times out of ten, the conversation after rounds was about my debating: arguments that could be improved, speaking pointers, compliments on my 2AC blocks or the 5 minutes of politics in the 1NR strategy. But there are always exceptions. My first debate tournament in college, a judge approached me after a round and told me I was cute. Not that I debated well. Not that I made a really great argument or spoke exceptionally clearly, but that I was cute. I could have had that experience anywhere: a conference, a work meeting, a party, or a concert. It didn’t phase me. It didn’t even really make me mad. In fact I laughed to myself, internalized it, and moved on. See, I learned that trick well in high school.

But I never once was forced to do anything against my will, or touched inappropriately. Never again did someone tell me I didn’t belong in a debate round because of my gender. I do not recall never feeling unsafe around other coaches or debaters. Many female debaters feel that they are categorized in two ways: a bitch or easy; girls that are all work and no play or girls that are all play. At least to my face, no one forced me into those boxes. I worked hard and said ‘no’ to lots of invitations, but I also made time to nurture my friendships in the community. Did I make social choices that I regret looking back? Sure. Did I learn something from them? Absolutely. Would I have made those same bad choices in some activity other than debate? Probably. Do I blame the debate community in any way? Hell no.

In a community that is so concerned with being concerned, we are hypersensitive to things like race, sexual orientation, gender, and ethnicity. We are more educated than many of our peers and with that great power comes great responsibility. I am sure that there are other people­ men and women­ in debate who have coaching staff, teammates, or peers who make them uncomfortable. That is an injustice that demands action and attention. It just wasn’t my experience.

My injustice was more subtle, but just as damaging. To this day, when something goes my way at work or professionally, I often wonder if it is because someone thinks I’m attractive. I second guess my competence and confuse it with luck. I kick myself if I laugh too much or smile too freely with a male co­worker because I worry that they will think I am flirting with them. My parents did not teach me this. And certainly neither did my friends in the debate community. My high school debate coach taught me this because, in some strange and twisted way, she was in competition with a high schooler. As women, in the debate community and in life in general, we must be kinder to one another. We must remember that when another woman succeeds it does not mean we failed.

Yes. I was participating in debate when my injustice happened. But it could have happened anywhere. Debate gave me the tools to process what happened to me. Debate showed me that there is more power in collaboration and love than there is in jealousy or selfishness. With these tools I can prevent myself from continuing the cycle and I can work to empower instead of demoralize. As a woman in a male­ dominated debate world, I learned skills many women struggle with. Compared to my female peers, I tend to be more vocal with my opinions because I am comfortable sharing them with anyone. I have confidence in my own ability to communicate, work with data, research, and handle tough questions. I learned these things earlier in life because of debate and because of these skills I have been able to seek out professional opportunities beyond my years.

Being a woman in debate who was bullied by another woman in a position of power changed me forever. I am slowly chipping away at my own self doubt, but in the meantime I find that I am consciously trying to be kinder and more supportive of other women in my professional life. I am aware of the potential pain of my actions may inflict and work to check my own biases wherever I can. Debate helped me process and learn from my own injustice, it did not cause it. Policy debate is not a man’s world just because there are more men in it. It is a world that belongs to every person who loves the craft. It is a world where kindness is cherished, opinions can be safely tested and crafted, and questions are encouraged. It is a world where the lessons translate into every aspect of our lives and make us better employees, spouses, and friends. It is a world that is constantly improving and will always strive to be better.

Talking Like a Girl

Nothing connects us and distinguishes us as a species like our voices.  Lots of animals have bodies and touch languages they use to communicate, but I think that the rich layers of information transfer that proceed through human vocalization have few parallels in the biological world.

Think about it.  When you speak, you say so much more than is contained in the literal meaning of your words and phrases.  You embed information about your identity and context.  Your tone and volume deepen the superficial interpretation of the content that you deliver.  Even minor quirks like inflection and cadence send important signals that might operate on a subliminal, psychological level, but they exist all the same.

Tomorrow I'll share the first guest post of the year (exciting!), which gives one narrative example of the ways that men and women might operate differently or be perceived differently in communicative spaces, so I wanted to preface that story today with a broader exploration of the ways that men and women are differentiated by speech.

Don't take that tone with me

Several stories have bubbled to the surface in recent years about the ways that women talk and how they might undermine themselves with the speech patterns that underly the actual content coming out of their mouths.  Tendencies like "uptalking" (ending declarative sentences on an upward inflection that many associate with questions) or "vocal fry" (harder to describe; a slight buzzing that often comes at the end of phrases overlaid on top of words.  The term was coined because it reminds some people of low fidelity sound from older recordings that come with a white-noise type hiss over the entire track) that abound in the voices of young women strike many as totally abrasive, and come with an instant loss of credibility.  Actress Lake Bell went as far as to describe the situation as a pandemic, adding that she can't stand to be around people who speak with those vocal patterns.

One thing to point out: people that lambast young women for manifesting these vocal tics can cite zero research suggesting that these patterns are actually more common in women.  I know plenty of men and boys that uptalk and demonstrate vocal fry, but in popular culture these are perceived to be problems almost exclusively for girls.  You have to wonder if the matrix of patriarchal power relations that infuses our culture pushes us to find new and innovative ways to blame women for the apologetic posture they're encouraged to take in so many ways.  Setting aside the question of whether women "choose" to speak this way, or if it arises from real biological differences, or if it emerges as a product of patriarchal social relations that incentivize women to be meek and submissive, I'm shocked at the kind of comments that otherwise intelligent people are willing to make about very intelligent women, based exclusively on the sounds of their voices.  Emma Gray and Claire Fallon documented some of the abuse they received after starting a podcast, including being labeled "whiny", "empty-headed valley girls", and "sorority girls with zero insight".  They dug deeper and unearthed a wealth of research that shows that boys, in fact, DO manifest all of the same vocal tics as women.  It's only women that get punished and stigmatized for it.

Non-violent Communication

For the sake of discussion, let's accept for now that men and women might have some differences in the ways they speak.  Returning to our monthly theme of patriarchy, the dominance move isn't to acknowledge difference, it's to attach value judgements to difference, i.e. to differentiate between men's and women's speaking styles, and to then declare the men speak "better" than women.  That's Patriarchy 101.  An objective thinker might consider that both men and women bring certain value to groups with their speech patterns.  I just discovered a fascinating excerpt from a longer work by Julia Wood that documents some of the psychological drivers that influence men's and women's speech patterns, for instance that women are driven more strongly by an urge to develop connection and community in their speech, while men are driven by an urge for dominance.

Now when is the last time you heard a prominent male speaker get criticized for being to aggressive or dismissive of his conversation partner's perspectives (besides Trump)?  If we could unravel all of the tentacles of patriarchy that have warped our cultural perceptions, we could draw on a vast wealth of feminine perspectives that deserve to be valued, rather than translated into a communicative mode that's convenient for men.

Doc, is it serious?

Galen, one of the first anti-woman
propagandists in the medical field

A few months ago, I heard a radio interview with Joe Fassler, a regular contributor to The Atlantic, in which he relayed an absolutely horrifying experiencing his wife was subjected to when she went to the ER in excruciating pain.  I won't re-hash it all here, but you can read the full piece if you're in the mood to become incredibly upset.  It affected me significantly; I would say that it was one of the primary motivators that drove me to choose an exploration of patriarchy as TFP's first month-long deep dive.

Today we discuss a few of the ways patriarchy infiltrates the medical field.  It's an incredibly potent illustration for anyone who, like me, can be uncontroversially labeled with the white male identity.  If you share that identity with me but you don't understand what other people are irritated about, what the 'feminazis' are so upset about, now that we're all equal and all, then read on.  Hopefully you'll discover just how much easier your life has been because you were lucky enough to be born into the presumptively 'normal' identity group.

Worms and Snails versus Sugar and Spice

It's been pretty thoroughly established: male and female bodies differ quite significantly.  These differences extend beyond the obvious sexual anatomical distinctions to thousands of more subtle differences that manifest in essentially every major biological system.  This truism might not seem like a big deal until one recalls the fact that since white men have had almost exclusive dominance over all major cultural institutions on the developed world until the last half century or so.  Long story short: in countless situations, decisions are made that privilege male biology over female biology.

Sometimes these choices only result in minor, nuissance-level irritations.  One example that hit the mainstream last year was the revelation that thermostats in most offices were calibrated to suit the metabolism of middle-aged men, which would explain why women are so often uncomfortably (or even unbearably) cold in offices and schools.

Sometimes the consequences are more severe.  For instance, heart attacks often have extremely different symptoms in males and females (in addition to chest pain and left-side numbness/weakness, women frequently and intensely experience shortness of breath and nausea/vomiting).  Most people aren't aware of these differences, which leaves many more heart attacks in women undiagnosed.  Given that cardiac disease is the number one killer among women in the developed world, I'd say that the costs of male-normed medical knowledge are significant for those born without penises.

He's a doctor, he knows what he's doing

The absurdity of the entire situation becomes even more dramatic when one discovers that even highly trained medical professionals demonstrate and reinforce the prioritization and normalization of the male body at the expense of the female.  The anatomy textbooks they study in medical school prime them to defend this bias; the educational and reference materials use images and illustrations of (white) male anatomy at a rate three times higher than female anatomy for biological features that exists in both males and females.  Three times!  Imagine the normative effect this embeds in these doctors minds, if only on a subliminal level.  Worse still, much of the data and treatment information included in the texts is only appropriate for male patients, with no instructions on how to adjust for females - things like dosage recommendations for medications, for instance.

You might think that the extremely intelligent people that choose to become doctors aren't phased by this stuff, that they can treats patients objectively and effectively irrespective of sex.  You'd be wrong.  One of the most soul-crushing angles that Mr. Fassler's piece in The Atlantic explores is the ways in which declarations of pain are treated differently depending on whether they come from men or women.  The fact is that men's pain is taken more seriously, and women's pain is often dismissed.  Women are expected to prove that they're sick and in need of care, while doctors will take the pleas of help coming from male patients for granted.  There have been cases of women seeking medical care while suffering from physically real and excruciating pain, and instead being treated for hysteria or other mental illnesses (the term hysteria actually originates from ancient Greek medical texts; women were said to suffer from it when their uterus was drifting around their body causing trouble.  The preferred cure was to weigh the darn thing down with a baby to keep it from wandering off).

I don't really know where else to go with this, except to exhort anyone who's convinced that we live in a totally equal society where everyone gets the same chances to think long and hard about that assumption.  Chances are you only feel that way because you don't have as much horrible shit to deal with by virtue of your fortunate chromosomes.

The Cycle of Expectations

In my personal experience, one of the most prickly parts of debates around patriarchy in its various manifestations how the behavior of those who are subjected to its effects interacts with people's notions of individual and social responsibility.  I'm talking every sort of victim blaming that some folks are inclined to in discussions about sexual violence, for instance, or people that suggest because women (and men) choose to act a particular way, they don't deserve anyone's sympathy.  A woman who experiences sexual harassment at work is free to change jobs, they say.  They stomp their feet and grumble that students who want more sensitivity in the language and practices employed on their campuses aren't entitled to have other people conform to their viewpoints.  People that take these kinds of stances often broadly lament the tyranny of "political correctness" which from their perspective has run amok and threatens to suffocate our American identity.  Let's dig a little deeper into this way of seeing the world, shall we?

Voices of our Choices

To really unpack the tension between the insidious nature of patriarchy and the countless choices we all make that comply with and prop up that power structure, we have to look back to the origins of those patriarchal tendencies: our biological programming.  Millenia of brutishly successful reproductive strategies have infected us all with an evolutionary tendency to play our designated parts in the androcentric mode of social organization.  Speaking in a broad, statistical way, women are born with a tendency to nurture, men to dominate and protect.  Built on top of this biological programming is social programming - human civilization was built by humans, after all, so it isn't surprising that we would produce sociocultural norms that reinforce and justify certain aspects of our biological programming.

So when women derive pleasure from or strive to appear attractive to men or when they hesitate to express their opinions for fear of being seen as "bitchy", they are making choices that make sense within the context of their biological imperatives and the status quo balance of social incentives. Does the fact that they make those choices necessitate that they also surrender their right to criticize the system that threatens them with very real consequences if they don't comply?

The American Way

That is the question, isn't it?  Many people absolutely hate any suggestion that responsibility for a person's decisions might lie beyond that individual person.  These people feel that the buck should stop at the boundary line of each individual's free will.  Choices come with consequences.  I get where they're coming from.  Particularly in the individualistic mythos that dominates the American psyche, that glorifies negative rights (don't mess with me) over positive rights (society owes me something), the idea that people might consider how the broader society plays a role in people's choices is abhorrent.

But here's a counterpoint to consider: to condemn someone for expressing their discontent with a system of power that has incredible influence over their lives is fundamentally un-American and anti-democratic, I think.  In just the same way that some knee-jerk conservatives whip out the old "If you don't like America, then you should get out!" line, deploying tactics like victim blaming is analogical; these people are saying "If you don't like patriarchy, you should just get out (of the society that's dominated by patriarchy)!"

Setting aside the tremendous costs this viewpoint imposes on individuals who have the least power and influence in the current social arrangement, let's think about the political implications of such a stance.  It demonizes people who criticize the way the world is right now.  If that perspective had won out in the past, we might all be serfs performing back-breaking labor in service to our feudal lords.

To put it another way, this is a question about hating the player versus hating the game.  It's nearly impossible to opt out of the game, in this case; we're all living it.  The game of democracy includes stipulations that allow players to change the rules.  If you don't like that, then what you're really uncomfortable with is the idea of American democracy, so maybe you should just get out.  Eastern Europe is experiencing significant negative population growth.  I'm sure they'd be happy to have you.

The Tyranny of Biology

We're already a week into January, so it seems like I'm overdue to consider a question that lurks in the background of all of this month's discussion: where does patriarchy come from?  How has it come to permeate all aspects of our culture (and virtually every culture in the world)?

Bad Genes

In its most essentialized form, I think answering the question about the origins of patriarchy is really a reproduction of the broader "nature versus nurture" debate regarding all human behavior.  I have some big reservations about constructing nature and nurture as a dichotomy, but to set that point aside for a moment, I think there's fairly persuasive evidence that patriarchy exists as something more than an intellectual construct.

For one thing, the rest of the mammal cohort is replete with examples of social groups and interactions dominated by strong males.  Prides of lions, for instance, are led by a single male lion that mates with several females.  Perhaps more telling, dominance hierarchies that influence reproductive opportunities abound in our closest evolutionary relatives - chimpanzees, macaques, gorillas, and most other primates.  So well established is this natural foundation of the strong male that assumes a leadership role that much of the language we use to discuss male dominance in the human world is drawn from allusions to animals; strong men who exhibit typically masculine traits (confidence, aggression, physical strength) are praised as "top dogs" or "alpha males."

Even more convincing to me is obvious connection between gene propagation and male dominance.  All traits exist and prosper to the extent that those traits encourage behavior that increases the likelihood of reproduction; males that assertively control the reproductive process by exerting their will over females and less "masculine" males are much more likely to transmit their genes, thus replicating and intensifying this competition for control over weaker members of the species.  To return the example of lion prides, when one alpha is replaced by another, the new alpha proceeds to kill all the offspring sired by the previous alpha (talk about control freaks, right?)... On a Fresh Air Interview last year, I heard Gloria Steinem define patriarchy as the male attempt to control the reproductive process.  She didn't elaborate, and at the time I thought it seemed a little nebulous.  But as I reflect on the provenance of patriarchal behavior and its evolutionary origins, the connection between its countless manifestations and that original evolutionary imperative seem quite persuasive.

Our Better Angels

As a concluding thought, I think it's worth addressing the "so what?" that some of you might be feeling right now.  Many people are comfortably dismissing without interrogation a lot of human behavior because it's just "human nature."  Biology carries with it a certain sense of inevitability; the weight of our genes and the ways that they interact with our behavior seem inescapable, and therefore not worthy of our thoughtful resistance.  Why fight nature, right?

Well, it seems to me that pretty much the entire project of human civilization has been one long, slow effort to overcome the cruelest aspects of our genetic programming.  If all behavior that came naturally to people were tacitly accepted, then there would be no need to regulate with laws.  Biology is not insurmountable; one could even argue that in a modern world where reproductive decisions don't have to hinge on immediate questions of survival, we have the opportunity to intentionally direct our evolution in a better direction.  Patriarchy exists because pushy assholes have been the most successful at transmitting their genes.  If we could change that, then perhaps everything else might change too.

Is science a man's game?

Marie Curie

Yesterday I promised a more thorough rebuttal of Larry Summer's blithe assertion that women were inherently inferior at science, and that this had been convincingly established by behavioral genetics.  One distinctive anecdote from his own speech that he believes illustrates his point is a story about his own daughter.  According to numerous accounts of the talk, the story goes that when his daughter was a toddler, he gave her two trucks to play with (as part of an attempt at "gender neutral" parenting).  He was surprised to see her treat them like dolls, calling one of them the "daddy truck" and the other the "baby truck."  From his perspective, this demonstrated the female tendency to reframe observations within a nurturing, reproductive framework to which they are predisposed, rather than making objective observations about phenomena to construct understanding.  So let's unpack all of that, shall we?

Difference is Real

No one can deny that some part of sexual difference is biological, rather than the result of socialization - breasts, vaginas, and penises for example.  Similarly, since all of those gross anatomical differences come with associated hormonal differences, it's not a controversial argument in my mind to suggest that men's brains and women's brains might also manifest certain differences that might cause them to look at the world differently.  I confess that have a very materialistic view of the world (in the sense that I think that our physical corpus, the matter in our brains, the cocktail of chemicals surging through our bodies are sufficient to explain human behavior without resorting to some kind of indescribable soul or essence); it's also my personal experience that within men and women there exist a tremendous range of personalities, tendencies, and world views, and that any generalization will fail to capture many peoples' experiences.  However, I think that the statistical, epidemiological level, one could observe differences in the behavior patterns of men and women that could be attributed to genetic, biological differences.  So I suppose you could say that I don't object per se to the explicit premise of Summers's argument: in the big picture, there are real biological differences between the ways men and women see the world.

Objectivity is a myth

HOWEVER - what I find extremely objectionable is the implied premise that follows: that the way

Rachel Carson.  She's the reason we're
not all getting cancer from DDT.

men look at the world is somehow inherently better, and therefore when women engage in scientific pursuits, they do so with an inherent disadvantage.  I've blogged before about Paul Feyerabend's argument that an exclusionist attitude towards the production of knowledge is foolish and counterproductive, and Summers's attitude is a prime example of how a representative of the dominant group attempts to preserve dominance by privileging his own perspective, at the expense of the oppressed group in particular and of society more generally.  Summers' tacit conceit that there's a right way and a wrong way to do science and that men do it the right way is a not-so-subtle entrenchment of patriarchal elitism that tells men that what comes most naturally to them is best and what comes most naturally to women is inherently less valuable.  To put it more simply - I don't think it's wrong to point out differences between men and women, but the attachment a value statements to tendencies associated with one gender or the other should be viewed with extreme skepticism.

But what about all the awesome stuff that we've gotten from science?

That's what you might be asking about now.  If Summers is suggesting that the male way of doing science is best, perhaps its because it has yielded such tremendous technological dividends.  Well, here's a few quick thoughts on that point.

1. The goods of the status quo aren't an argument against doing things differently, and particularly doing them more inclusively.  We have no matriarchal alternate universe to compare with our own that might help us understand what the scientific world might look like if it were dominated by female knowledge production.  In any case, Feyerabend's original argument emphasizes inclusion: any practice, any approach that yields useful insights for life or inquiry has value and validity, and we'd all be better off if we could take an instrumental, "all of the above" approach to our understanding of the world.
2. Science has done plenty of horrible things as well.  Summers critiqued his daughter for the nurturing attitude she took towards her toy trucks; perhaps that ethical dimension might have diminished the likelihood of the invention or proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, or fostered more attention to environmental and resource preservation at an earlier stage in human technological development.  One might argue, in fact, that to the extent that typically "masculine" traits are manifested in science, they've endangered the survival of the human race and the entire ecosphere.  That's a consequence worth considering.
3. The idea that there is a proper "methodology" is really a myth that's deployed to silence voices that the dominant group finds threatening.  Feyerabend's entire book centers around an analysis of Galileo's challenge to the heliocentric theory, and systematically demonstrates that he disregards nearly all aspects of the process that has been enshrined as the "scientific method."

Perhaps I could have summed this post up much more succinctly with the following statement and question.  "Larry Summers thinks women are bad at science.  But who gets to decide what good science is?"

Power Dynamics in Pedagogy

two of my former students demoing projects they did for our electricity unit in conceptual physics.

My time as a debater trained me to constantly analyze patterns of thought and assumption, even my own.  In the years I've spent (more than a decade, now) judging policy debates, I'm constantly drawn to search for trends in my decisions and perspectives over time.  Do I vote more often for one side of the resolution than the other?  Do I favor certain schools?  Do my decisions demonstrate bias against any particular demographic?  I haven't actually crunched the numbers. Perhaps one day I'll go back and take a rigorous look at the data, but at the very least what I can tell you from this thought experiment and a collection of other experiences I've had as a professional educator is that the transfer of knowledge and skills is not a totally neutral experience.

Like any communicative relationship that exists between human beings, the countless interactions between teacher and student, peer and peer in the educational process are influenced by the culture, history and power structures in which we are all inextricably entangled.  Since this month we're discussing the p-word (look to the top of the right column of the blog if you're confused about what I'm referring to), I thought this would be a suitable moment to reflect on the ways that gender influence the educational space.

The Soft Bigotry of Diminished Expectations

My more liberal readers will hopefully forgive the allusion to one of the more eloquent turns of phrase ever slapped together by George W.'s speech writers.  It's a question I've considered many times - do my academic and/or behavioral expectations shift when I consider female students versus their male peers?  I primarily teach AP Sciences, feeder courses for college majors where women are significantly underrepresented.  It's difficult to articulate a definitive answer to that question; in a post that will come early next week, I'll elaborate more thoroughly when I get into strategies for breaking down patriarchy, but suffice to say that I think that it's unproductive to apply labels to individuals, and much more useful to analyze particular actions.  I'm certain there are times when my viewpoint and to some extent my baseline for judging a student has been informed in subtle ways by societal norms attached to their gender.  I've definitely associated students' personalities with various gendered archetypes in the process of getting to know them and understand them, and that by itself inscribes some patriarchal norms onto those students.

A stereotype exists in the modern world that women are weaker in S.T.E.M. fields, either because those fields are inherently less appealing to them or because they are inherently less skilled in those disciplines.  Various people, some of them extremely prestigious, have ascribed various biological explanations to reinforce this stereotype.  For instance, the year I was graduating high school, then-Harvard University President Larry Summers, a fellow that had previously served as Clinton's treasury secretary and who would go on to become one of Obama's top economic advisors (#ThanksObama), made a long argument at a public address that women were conclusively worse at science than men at that said fact had been established by studies in behavioral genetics.  To even begin to unpack what's erroneous about his conclusions will require an entirely new blog post (come back tomorrow to read all about it!); if you read some of the anecdotes from Summers' address what you'll see is that his conclusions only come close to plausibility when viewed through the patriarchal lens that privileges typically male perspectives and devalues female perspectives.

I don't really know yet where this contemplative road leads us.  But I can say that I feel it's incumbent on all educator to work to build and practice intentional, metacognitive awareness.  I don't know if it's possible to unpack and neutralize all of the loaded assumptions we carry into the classroom with us, but I do know that discovering and challenging those assumptions is a necessary prerequisite.

Withering Under the Pitiless Gaze

This problem of loaded assumptions is complicated by the fact that not only do these assumptions exist, but most people, particularly the people that are disadvantaged by them, are acutely aware that they exist.  Which is to say that many female students are aware to some extent that they might be assessed differently than their classmates who remembered to bring their Y-chromosomes to school.  The insidious consequences of this fact manifest themselves in many ways.  Female students may be less likely to answer questions or to volunteer to participate than assertive male students.  Many self-identify as being weaker in math and science, having internalized the negative messages about themselves that have been pounded into them by the ascendant zeitgeist.  We won't even get into the differences between the ways the bodies of male and female students are treated differently and the ways that even younger female students are sexualized.

The natural consequence of such an environment is a desire to seek quarantine.  Most all-girls schools and secondary schools specifically market themselves as opportunities for female students to excel without the added complications that come with the baggage of patriarchy.

Deep down in my soul, I'd really like to believe that we can find a better way to live than dividing ourselves up into homogenous units because we can't figure out how to live together in heterogeneous groups without damaging each other.  It's a pessimist's strategy, one that invests in the idea that our messed up social relations are irreparable.  I'd like to believe the way forward is for oppressed groups to help the oppressors learn to see the world through other peoples' eyes.  But I'm not the one that 's being told by society that I'm just not as good at things as the other 50% of the population and my body and emotions are really only optimized to nurture infants.  So I'm not in a position to judge any female's decisions.

I'll close this one with a personal anecdote that I recently learned about my own mother.  When she was born, her father was at the hospital, and he was heard to say just as she entered the world, "Not another damn girl!", just before he stomped out.  She grew up being told time and again that she wasn't capable, that should couldn't handle complicated mechanical tasks like driving a standard transmission (which she learned to do), that she wasn't smart (even though she was the valedictorian of both her high school and college graduating classes).  And despite all of those clear validations of her worth from external institutions, despite going on to earn a masters' degree and become a professional accountant and then educator, she still to this day struggles with a devastating sense of personal inadequacy.  Because sometimes poisonous seeds that get planted too deep are incredibly difficult to root out.

That's what we're dealing with here, people.