Email to my IPE lecturer on how to teach feminist theory

So I feel like I'm getting in the habit of emailing my lecturers to complain about stuff way too much. My mum thinks I should be spending the time more usefully doing assignments. Maybe. But this one at least has given me context for how I want to do my next assignment, so its useful in that sense.

This is a response to the lecture I talked about at the start of my previous post (oops, by start I mean beginning in the 9th paragraph :P) when my IPE (international political economy - think international relations smooshed with economics) lecturer managed to get through an entire lecture on feminism without mentioning patriarchy and barely using female authors. 

I chatted to him about it afterwards, but I approached it more in the context of me wanting to find female authors, rather than critiquing his lecture. But it continued to bother me, so when he emailed me with a bunch of suggested readings (which was very nice of him, and he is a lovely guy) I really felt the need to respond with my thoughts.

Here's what I said:

Thanks for the suggestions, I appreciate you following up on this.

I've decided not to do that question. Instead, I'm going to do the question on the global financial crisis from an eco-feminist perspective. I think that while it is important to look at how our current system affects women, an equally important aspect of feminist analysis is looking at the way that the system as a whole is fundamentally flawed - not just in terms of how it negatively impacts women, but also its impacts on the entire planet. I plan to argue that feminist/ecological/radical/non-orthodox approaches have explained the GFC better than any of the mainstream analysis, but have not had a big enough impact on "the global politics of finance".

I have also been thinking about the lecture the other day, and realised I didn't articulate myself very well. I guess the point that I wanted to make (but didn't,really) was not so much that I was looking for feminist authors to use myself (although this is appreciated), but that I think it would have been really great if more female perspectives were used in the lecture. I think that the whole discipline of economics is biased in favour of men, and it is alarming that female perspectives are barely even used in the one lecture on feminism (let alone the rest of the course!!). What example does it set for young women if almost all the theorists we look at, even the experts on gender inequality, are men? To be clear, I think men engaging in feminism is absolutely fantastic. It is only problematic when this is done at the expense of women.

I was also interested that, although you gave a bunch of possible explanations for the gender wage gap, the concept of patriarchy was not mentioned (that I noticed). I think that patriarchy is probably the most fundamental element of any feminist analysis. Women are not paid less simply due to a bunch of related reasons that were mentioned, but because of the overarching social and economic system skewed in favour of men - patriarchy. We can't look at these factors as discrete issues and try to pinpoint "causes" for the wage gap without looking at this overarching system as an explanation.

Anyway those were just some of my thoughts in response to the lecture. This is not about your teaching in particular, but rather my frustration at the way that gender inequality continues to be entrenched in an academic setting, despite the gains that feminism has made. In fact, alarmingly, I think in many respects we are going backwards. I am aware that there used to be a paper on feminist economics, and now there isn't. In light of this, it is even more important to be include feminist critiques in every paper as much as possible. This is what I would like to see more of.

Cheers

Better articulated thoughts on feminism and men's inclusion

My history lecturer started our class the other day by talking about feelings. She asked us to talk to each other about emotional reactions we’ve had to reading history.  This made me really happy, mostly because it’s absolutely the LAST thing most of my lecturers would do, and I think it’s brilliant. Too often we learn in the abstract, and are taught to detach from what we are studying, and forget that people – real, living, breathing, creatures – are at the centre of everything we do.

My lecturer told us to think about our emotions as we went through the class. To recognise them. And to acknowledge them. But also to not let them get in the way. Emotions can distort good history, and good writing generally, because if a piece is too emotionally-laden, its factual merits are far less likely to be taken seriously. Emotions can also make us prone to exaggeration, which undermines our entire argument.

This seems obvious, and it is. But in the moment, it is very easy to forget.

So it was with a great deal of cringe that I re-read my post on the WSA conference the other day. It is very different to my usual style. Full of swearing, bold assertions, wild accusations, and just a whole bunch of inarticulate rage.

I would be very ashamed if any of the older members of WSA read that post and knew it was me, but thankfully, this is the advantage of writing under a pseudonym. Nothing in it was constructive in the slightest, and while I do appreciate the platform of my blog as a space for venting, this has its limits and should be done respectfully.

I was tempted to thoroughly edit the post, at least removing the offensive language and toning it down. But then I realised that most people who are going to read it probably have already – and also that this is not a particularly honest way to respond. Plus, I think that post has the value of reflecting a certain emotional space that I was in at the time.

I want to revisit the topic in an attempt to articulate myself more coherently. I want to look at the nuances of arguments for and against cis-men’s inclusion in feminist spaces. I want to point out, again, that discussion around including gender minorities, and especially transwomen is far more urgent than including men, although I feel strongly about both. The need to explicitly include transwomen seems pretty obvious and I feel I’ve made a decent stab at addressing why in my last post. The inclusion of other gender minorities in women-only spaces, as I am learning, is a highly complex issue, because of all the different layers of privilege society gives people based on what gender they are assumed to be. I don’t feel qualified to discuss this, so I won’t in this post – but I think it is a glaring issue which should absolutely be on the table.

On the subject of cis-men’s inclusion, I’ll start by explaining why women’s only spaces are important. After spending the weekend with feminists, it was a bit of a shock to go back to uni. I have a new lecturer for one of my law courses, who seems to be just as much a  fan of sexist jokes as the previous one. He referred to a man’s ex-wife’s divorce lawyer as an example of his point that every story has a villain.

And in my international political economy course, we had a token lecture on feminism. Although it was barely even about feminism, really. Only a very narrow aspect of it, namely income inequality between men and women. This is an important subject, and I’m glad we discussed it, but a deeper inquiry into feminist economic thought would have been nice.

A range of explanations for the wage gap were given. Societal perceptions of men as breadwinners, women as carers. The value of work done at home, which isn’t part of the market economy. Babies. Unequal access to education and training. Different cultural expectations of men and women. All legitimate reasons, sure, but I found it really interesting, and shocking, that the word patriarchy was not mentioned at all.  I don’t know of any strand of feminism that doesn’t use the concept of patriarchy as the basis of its analysis, but please, correct me if I am wrong on this. Maybe you can mansplain it to me. 

And on the topic of mansplaining, I found it deeply offensive that the author that the lecturer drew on for 80% of the class was male. When I asked him about this, the response was that this author was the most prominent theorist on the topic. Which he probably is, but that is, I would imagine, the result of gender discrimination in the field of IPE, and more broadly, a conception of economics which is biased towards men. I think the ideal place to challenge these perceptions would probably be a 200 level paper. I have decided, rather than getting pissed off and writing an email to the lecturer, I’m going to usefully channel that energy by using entirely female authors for my next essay. Which won’t actually be hard at all, because heaps of awesome critical types are women anyway. This is probably another reason why they are ignored by the mainstream literature. But I digress, this is a topic for another day.

The class made me realise the context from which the need for a women’s only academic space emerged. And why this space matters. Women are still not taken seriously in an academic setting, and the issues that these second wave feminists were fighting in the 70s are absolutely still there. In some cases they are more subtle (for example, there are now more female than male undergrad students, although this does not translate into academic positions, and especially high-up positions) and in others more glaring (Vic used to have a feminist economics paper; now it doesn’t. And of course it used to have a whole Women’s Studies department. Go figure.).

I think this is why women’s only spaces are so valued. They are a space to be taken seriously, to be heard, for once, on equal terms. A chance to escape the insanity of the world we live in and the people we have to deal with, to be surrounded with those who share in our struggle. And, given that those spaces had to be fought for so desperately, I can understand the reluctance to give that up.

On the other hand, I stand by my argument that Women’s Studies must be a space where men are included. They too have a role to play in this struggle, and we should be encouraging that.

The thing is, it is largely men who are responsible for rape, domestic violence, objectification of women, paying women less, passing ridiculous retrogressive laws, etc etc etc. And that most men think that feminists are a bunch of angry, hairy, man-hating lesbians, or that feminism has already achieved its victories so shut up and stop complaining, or both. Of course there's nothing wrong with being lesbian or hairy, and we have every right to be angry, even if it's unconstructive. But the way that society clings to this stereotype in a negative way is harmful to feminism as a whole.

I am not convinced that we are going to get much further in these struggles without engaging with them. I am all for sitting around theorizing about the problems, and I absolutely think this has its place. But social change is always about engagement, and men have to be a part of the solution, otherwise we will just continue to inhabit completely distinct worlds. At least, distinct academic worlds, because the world we actually live in involves all genders, and we need to figure out how to function alongside each other.

I also suspect that young men are far more likely to look up to older men as role models than a bunch of what they perceive as angry-man-hating-lesbians. Men learn about sex and relationships from other men, or from the media, or porn, or whatever. I imagine they don’t learn about rape culture, or male privilege, or how to respect women, unless they have really strong male role models demonstrating this behaviour, and actively fighting for change.

I imagine lots of men are put off feminism because they see it as separatist, and I can understand why. But for most feminists, we don't want separatism, we want equality. It is not helpful moving forward if we continue to exclude, because this leads to increasing divisions, and I'm sure for many men, complete disengagement from feminist thought. Anyone who wants to fight for equality should be encouraged to do so, and warmly welcomed. This should of course, come with the caveat that they have a basic understanding of feminism and acknowledge their own privilege.

And there's plenty of awesome men, whose perspectives on feminism I would love to see included. Like this guy. 

There are also lots of less awesome guys. I don’t think we want conferences to be overrun with men who don’t actually understand feminism, and who just want to be in control and tell women what to do. And I think that’s part of the reason for excluding them. We don’t want a bunch of trolls coming along and derailing the conversation. And that’s a totally valid point. But I’m sure that there can be procedures to address this, like being able to throw people out if they are making others uncomfortable.

And most guys that I know who are actually feminists (and yeah, there’s not many of them) would really benefit from attending this kind of conference. They would benefit from hearing women’s perspectives, and they would benefit from the experience of being in the minority and not feeling entirely comfortable in the space. They would also have a lot to contribute, in terms of how we can educate and engage with other men.

Another argument, of course, is that as feminism moves into the 21^st century, it needs to become intersectional. I think by now it’s uncontroversial that second-wave feminism focuses on middle/upper class, white, able-bodied, cis-gendered women, to the exclusion of everyone else. I do think that the inclusion of all women is more urgent than the inclusion of men. But if we accept the existence of intersections of oppression, and reject gender binary as a social construct, then why not include everyone in our struggles for equality?

I still believe in women’s only spaces, and I think it’s a really good, practical solution for conferences to have some spaces open to everyone, and others only open to women, maybe with parallel workshops for men at the same time. (I don’t know how this would work in terms of how to include gender minorities in women’s only spaces, and this also needs to be part of any discussion, of course.) There would also have to be rules and boundaries about how men are to be included.

So I don’t proclaim to have any of the answers, and I do realise that the issues are rather more complex than my last post made them out to be. My point though, is that this issue absolutely has to be on the table if feminism is to remain relevant and engaged with society as a whole.

WSA conference, or my disillusions with second-wave feminism.

[Edit: I was pretty pissed off when I wrote this and I'm not necessarily proud of everything I wrote. Please read this post in the context of my later post here]

I’ve just spent the weekend at the Women’s Studies Association of NZ conference. It was interesting, to say the least! Lots of really amazing, inspiring people doing really cool things (hopefully, the subject of a future post). But the overall direction of the organisation has left me profoundly uncomfortable.

I was absolutely shocked to learn on Saturday that only women were allowed to attend the conference. I’d read something about only women being allowed to present, which seemed kinda archaic in itself, but the ban on other genders attending the conference seemed beyond ridiculous.

I learnt about it in the context of someone I’d just met telling me that she’d signed her boyfriend up without even thinking about it, only to be told he couldn’t attend. The reaction from many of us was simply… Wtf.

I do appreciate the need for women’s spaces. I do enjoy being in women’s only spaces, and the reprieve it gives us from the patriarchal world we have to deal with everywhere else. And I absolutely appreciate the historical context of the organisation, and the second wave feminism that it grew out of. It has achieved a lot, and I respect that.

But things have moved on, and this was evidenced by the fact that I was one of a handful of people under 30, and that 2/3 or so of attendees had grey hair. The organisation has been struggling to get people in its leadership positions for the last 10 years, and wants the younger generation to take up the mantle.

Yet, it refuses to listen. It wants the next generation to take over, but only on the older generation's terms.

I went to the AGM today (which was part of the conference) out of curiosity more than anything else. There’d been a lot of talk on this issue, and I wanted to see what eventuated.

After all the usual boring AGM-y stuff, a motion was moved to allow “men” to contribute articles to the WSA journal.

Men. Yes. Not people, but men.

Problematic on two levels, right? One, why the fuck could men not contribute already, and two, what about all the frikkin people who don’t identify as men or women? Why on earth would a feminist organisation exclude the already marginalised even more?

We have to stop believing in this ridiculously essentialist gender binary (and of course, that All Men Are Evil) and start to acknowledge that like, a) other genders exist, and are marginalised not just by the patriarchy but also by feminists, and b) that men are not the fucking problem, patriarchy is, and there are plenty of amazing guys (and PEOPLE) doing amazing work in this field that have a lot to contribute, and to ignore and exclude them is just… silly.

So anyway, discussion on this motion quickly turned into discussion on inclusion of men and other genders at the conferences and in the Association in general. Because they are exactly the same issue. But because this discussion about the future of the Association was the next item on the agenda, the discussion was not taken seriously, and then of course we ran out of time.

It went something like this.

One of the older feminists would talk for ages.

A friend of mine bravely pointed out the idiocy of excluding other genders.

More second-wave rant.

I started speaking about how I was absolutely shocked about the exclusion of men, and other genders, at the conference, and was interrupted by the chair because my point was not relevant to the discussion at hand. I responded that I was just talking from my experience, because I didn’t know anything about the journal, and it’s the same fucking issue anyway.

And that if you want young feminists to get involved, you have to start taking their views seriously, and not excluding huge sections of the population. And that I wasn’t a member, and didn’t intend to be, until they stopped being so bloody exclusive.

Then another older woman, who was “sitting on the fence” (and someone I quite admire, in other contexts) talked on and on for like 10 minutes (and really, not all of it was entirely relevant to the conversation) – with no interruption from the chair.

Then another friend made pretty much the same points as I did, and was interrupted after about a minute, being told she had to wrap up. She very bravely said “no, let me finish” and did so with the powerful statement that men are not the problem, patriarchy is. (duh)

It was suggested by someone that there could be some kind of compromise, with conferences open to all genders with some workshops/sessions just for women. Probably a fair enough solution, and it would have been nice to discuss it more.

Then the motion was passed on the men being able to write journal articles thing. If I’d been a member (and therefore able to vote) I probably would have abstained. Fucking ridiculous that they couldn’t just change men to “people”, and therefore include everyone (which was probably the intention, but their refusal to see gender in anything other than binary meant they didn’t get that it was still not inclusive).

Then there was only 10 minutes left, so no time for the actually important conversation on “where to”/”how do we get young people involved”, due to the chair’s refusal to regard that as the real issue at hand.

It was suggested that we come back together after the last panel to continue the discussion and I (and many others) thought this was decided on.

Lunch happened, and lots of interesting conversations about this issue. I do have to point out that some of the older women expressed their support for what we were saying, which was really good.

And then, after the last panel (of young feminists, interestingly), thanks and goodbyes were said, and that was it.

We were all like, wtf, what just happened. Apparently it was because some people had to leave. But we were really surprised, because it had seemed like the additional discussion was gonna happen, and we’d been preparing what to say.

I am really appalled and upset by this whole thing. I was truly shocked that men and other gender identities were excluded in the first place, and even more shocked by the discussion that happened at the AGM and the way that we were silenced and marginalised, if not by the majority of people there then certainly by the most vocal.

And that was only those of us who didn’t feel isolated/marginalised/disillusioned enough that we actually went to this conference.

As I said to one of the organisers, not only should they be listening to those of us who were speaking up; but they really need to be engaging with the people who WEREN’T there, and find out why and what they need to change in order to make it an open, inclusive and accessible space.

I was further offended by the suggestion that I should become a member in order to engage in further discussion on this issue. My response was that I’m not going to join an organisation that I fundamentally disagree with, and if they really want new people to join, they are the ones that have to go out and engage, and make it a space that people want to be part of.

And all this without even touching on the issues of race and class, which were also sorely lacking from the conference in general. It was overwhelmingly white, middle class and academic. It comes as no surprise that their continue to be negative stereotypes of feminists when they are so far out of touch with society.

And I sincerely hope this changes. Like I said, I truly respect the work of second-wave feminists. It would be a shame for the organisation to be disbanded, after all the hard work that these women have dedicated their lives to. And of course, there is a lot left to do, as we still live in a deeply patriarchal society. Better to build on these imperfect foundations than to start again from scratch.

Hopefully a blog on the more positive aspects of the weekend (there were plenty!) coming soon.

[UPDATE:] On further reflection, I realise there is a huge difference between including gender minorities such as trans*, intersex and genderqueer, and including cis-men. These are different issues, but both need to be addressed - for different reasons.

Gender minorities need to be included because they are also oppressed by the patriarchy, often more than women, and it is shocking that this is even still something that needs discussing. It should be a given. Even if there is no intent to exclude them (and I am not sure whether or not this is the case), it needs to be absolutely explicit that they are welcome in feminist spaces, and steps need to be taken to show they are actually welcome. Allowing "men" to contribute to the journal was a step in the wrong direction for this.

The discussion about inclusion of cis-men is more complicated, as they are often seen as the "problem", being the ones in the position of privilege and power. There is a desire to exclude them because women often feel excluded in men's spaces, and can feel unsafe when they are men around. Which is fair enough.

But at the same time, in any movement it is necessary to have allies, and especially to have allies in positions of power. There was plenty of talk from the younger feminists about (cis) guys who know as much about feminism than they do, and who can be really strong role models to younger guys about what sexism is, and what appropriate behaviour is.

As long as they acknowledge their own privilege (which the guys who are genuinely engaged with feminism do), guys like this would have a lot to offer, and a lot to learn, from this kind of conference. They would be able to spread their knowledge of feminism to their own, male communities, to start a dialogue and encourage understanding. Which, surely, is what we want, right?

Of course, both of these are about rejecting gender binary as a social construct, so in that sense they do have a lot in common. But I think it might be helpful to realise these different reasons for inclusion when we have these discussions.

Sexist jokes - reinforcing patriarchy, or critiquing it?

This is an email I wrote to a lecturer of mine, following up on a discussion we had after class last week. It was really interesting for me to do some research on the topic - it is SUCH a complex issue, and I feel that the more I read the more complex it gets, and the less I know. But here is my best attempt at articulating my view. Fingers are crossed for a response...

I want to start by explaining that I am not accusing you of sexism. I don’t believe that you are sexist. My point though, is that despite best intentions, comments intended as harmless can actually have really negative effects, because of the sexist society that we live in.

As a woman, when I hear jokes like the one you made, I feel frustrated and disappointed. I didn’t laugh, because I didn’t find it funny. And then I felt left out for not laughing. This makes me feel like law school is still a sexist environment, especially for women, who, like myself, take feminism seriously. And it makes me really upset that most female law students don’t realize how sexist it is (see here for an explanation of internalised sexism).

This means another generation is growing up with ingrained sexist attitudes, and that is really upsetting. You could be helping to turn the tide against this.

I posed this question to my friends on Facebook:

“FB friends! Opinions on this please. Lecturer says, 

"As a woman, when you get married you promise to do all the cooking and ironing."

How would you interpret this?

a) hilarious, because it is so ridiculous to hold that opinion of women that of course its a joke. By poking fun at this perspective we are challenging it and showing how ludicrous it is;

or,

b) sexist and offensive, because while meant as a joke, the fact that people find it funny is a reflection of the embedded sexist attitudes we continue to hold as a society. Although meant as harmless, it actually enforces patriarchal norms and attitudes towards women.

Thoughts?”

Here are some of the responses I got. This one is from another student in the class.

"I think there were definitely overtones of sexism in that comment. While I definitely think (a) was the intended interpretation, it was pretty obvious it relied on all of us thinking of "get back in the kitchen" jokes, and the idea that, in the legal contract of marriage, there was no room for equal partnership, but instead a female's role was that of cooking/cleaning etc while the manly man role of protection and money earning was left to the manly man. It totally wouldn't explicitly perpetuate (b) but definitely, in seeing a senior lecturer who commands a good deal of respect of students, he should know that it could implicitly could be seen by many members of our class as legitimising those kind of comments because "oh we all know they're just jokes". No, I don't appreciate being told to go back in the kitchen. I'll go in the kitchen because I enjoy baking, not because I'm practicing for my potential husband. "

Another friend said:

"I think B. I think it's stupid to consider that such a joke would bring attention to a situation and challenge it - women don't need reminding that sexism exists, we face it every bloody day. It just perpetuates and trivialised women's positions, by saying "look, this happens, and we can laugh at it!""

Another friend said that “argument a) is very dependent on the audience not having underlying/unconscious prejudices”.

From another friend:

“a) could be ok if the lecturer uses it as platform to deconstruct sexism; but b) comes into play as someone who holds discriminatory views sees jokes as a legitimisation of these views and ascribes to the speaker the same values. Jokes are seen by these receivers as vehicles of getting past social politeness.”

These responses assured me that I am not alone in my reaction, and helped me to articulate my point of view.

I understand that the joke was meant as a); and that you were genuinely trying to critique sexist attitudes, by showing how ridiculous they are. My point is though, that despite best intentions, jokes like this can still be sexist and harmful.

I know you said that probably only a minority of people in the class are sexist. I agree that most people are not sexist. But if a joke serves to reinforce the attitudes of one sexist person, and tells them that sexism, misogyny and demeaning women are ok, then are you really comfortable contributing to this one person’s belief?

But more importantly, this is a wider issue. Maybe only a handful of people in the class are overtly sexist. But this doesn’t change the fact that this is a much wider issue, because even though maybe not many individuals hold openly sexist attitudes, we still live in a sexist society.

If the joke that you told had been in a vacuum, where sexism didn’t exist and had never existed, then fine. But the reality is, we live in a world where women continue to be oppressed, and jokes that target women, or make light of sexism, or even attempt to critique it, despite best intentions, do serve to reinforce attitudes of sexism and misogyny.

Also, people laughed at this joke because overt sexism used to be ok and now it isn’t. But overt sexism isn’t funny, it is a very serious issue. If people think that overt sexism in the past is funny, one would suspect that these same people continue to think that sexism is funny today.

In thinking about this issue, I have come across the concept of “enlightened sexism”. “Enlightened sexism insists that women have made plenty of progress because of feminism -- indeed, full equality has allegedly been achieved -- so now it's OK, even amusing, to resurrect sexist stereotypes of girls and women. After all, these images can't undermine women at this late date, right?”

This quote is from this truly brilliant article which I highly recommend you read.

Also, scientific studies on the issue, here and here. And a linguistics analysis here. And another good article on sexist jokes generally here.

There are plenty more out there, but this should be a good start. I hope you get the opportunity to read some of them, and that they provide some food for thought, in terms of the way you frame some of your jokes. I am certainly not against all humour; I just think it has to be done in a respectful way.

Exactly how it can be done respectfully is a very difficult question. This article gives a good attempt to answer it, but only in the context of TV. I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and try as I might, I don’t think there is a blanket rule which applies in all circumstances. I do think though, that the main thing to keep in mind is that, given the sexist society we live in, the way the audience interprets a joke will not necessarily be as intended. Perhaps the only way around this is to make your point explicitly. Maybe this will reduce the hilarity of the joke – but in these circumstances, maybe we should be weighing up the value of a laugh against the value of challenging patriarchy, and deciding which is more important.

I want to reinforce that I am not accusing you, as an individual, of being sexist. I have nothing but respect for you, especially given your willingness to engage with me on this issue, rather than simply dismissing my concerns.

My problem is with the way that sexism exists, and is allowed to exist, in our society, and especially at law school. Being that this is a space where the top legal minds of the future are being educated, I feel it is absolutely critical that we begin to address these structural inequalities and barriers.


UPDATE: also check out this article on hipster sexism. Didn't include it in the email, but I think very very relevant to this issue:

"Hipster sexism hinges on the assumption that “no one thinks this way anymore” and therefore it’s funny, like making a joke about horses and buggies or something. It allows for sexist comments under the guise of being sooo far above them, and it’s a lot harder to call out than non-ironic, old-fashioned sexism. (Ah, those were the days. JK I am being ironic! See?)"

Uni week 2: brief observations on feminism and sexism.

Two things which I feel the need to share.

The first, I heard from a friend. A guy from Westlaw giving a seminar on how to use the database. Asks the class “I need something to search. Can one of the girls in the room tell me how to spell dishes?”

I don’t think I need to go into why this is sexist. Fortunately, from what I heard, no-one in the class found it particularly funny either. Which is good.

Apparently he also made comments about women being responsible for marriage break-ups.

To make matters worse, he made exactly the same “joke” to another seminar, on a different day. This means it was entirely planned and pre-determined. And even despite the cold reception, he obviously still thought it was hilarious.

My friend is going to raise it with the lecturer – will be very interesting to see what response he gets.

Ugh.

On the bright side though, one of my (male) lecturers apologised for the use of gendered language when reading a bit from a case about “reasonable man”.  That kinda made my day a little bit. He also uses “she” sometimes when talking about people in the abstract, which is pretty cool.

Conclusion? Overt sexism still exists at law school to some extent; although it seems to be way less accepted than overt racism (see my post on the subject). More subtle sexist attitudes are much more complicated, and will hopefully be the subject of a future blog.

On Schrodinger's Rapist

I posted this on FB the other day (which I found on here). Both great articles which you should read, but to summarise - Schrodinger's Rapist is basically saying that women are justified in exercising caution around men they don't know, because given the ridiculously high sexual violence stats (1 in 4 women will experience it in her lifetime); we have no way of knowing if the man will be a rapist or not, until the rape happens.

Got this message shortly after, from a pakeha, male (and as far as I know, straight, cis-gendered and able-bodied) friend:

On Schrodingers Rapist- it had some killer lines, and made excellent points. But, the underlying logic is problematic. THAT IS NOT TO SAY THAT I DISAGREE WITH ITS GOALS/ENDS (ending rape).

My summary of the argument-

1- Some members of group A (men) commit X (rape).
2- All X (rape) harms.
3- I do not want to be harmed.
Conclusion- I should treat all of group A (men) with caution in order to avoid X (rape).

Firstly, I agree with this goal. Caution is reasonable and important for preventing sexual assault. But I also think its important to recognise that the same argument structure is more problematic if we substitute group A (men) with group B (an ethnic group), and X (rape) with Y (steal/assault). I am not equating caution with racism, but comparing two argument structures. I am talking about soundness of means, not validity of ends.

Thoughts?

Since I wrote a fairly long response, I figured I might as well share it with the world. J

To start with, the issues of rape culture and racism are rather different; so the methodology used in one context will not necessarily work for the other. That is fine, because they are different issues.

Yes, some people from Y racial minority commit X crime, in the same way that some men rape. But people from Y racial minority also experience racism, including stereotyping because people from the majority race make assumptions about them being criminals. This makes it harder for them to do well in society, because they face prejudice every step of the way. This in turn makes it more likely for them to feel disconnected to the rest of society, as well, often, as being impoverished, which makes it more likely for them to commit crime.

Obviously, if we are “cautious” towards people of Y ethnicity, this is racism, will lead to more harmful stereotypes, etc etc etc. You know this, and I realize that the point of your analogy was to show that the methodology does not make sense, because of the bizarre outcome that would result when applied to race. Yes.

But I think it is really important to keep in mind that in terms of gender, women are the oppressed group, and men are privileged. The power dymanic changes completely when you substitute men for a racial minority, because you are reversing the roles of the privileged and the oppressed.

A better analogy would be if white people were group A, and some white people have been racist towards Y group in whatever way (say, denying them employment); therefore people from Y group are cautious towards people from A group, because they are not sure if person from A group will be racist to them or not. Person from Y group writes a blog in an attempt to get A group to understand the oppression Y group struggles against on a daily basis, and asks for a little patience and understanding if someone from Y group is cautious in their interactions with person from A group (because person from Y group has no way of knowing whether person from A group is racist or not).

Also, I think you’re missing the point of the article a little bit. Yes, the (long term) ends are ending rape. But I think your conclusion “I should treat all of group A (men) with caution in order to avoid X (rape)” misses the point. Treating men with caution will not avoid rape. Men not raping will avoid rape.

The article is not telling women to be cautious. The author realizes this will not end rape culture. Nowhere does she tell women to treat men with caution. In fact, the entire article is aimed at men. It takes as given that women treat men with caution, because that is the experience of the author.

The article is trying to get men to understand why women are cautious; and, based on this understanding, to treat them appropriately.

I was quite stoked with the response I received, which showed that he’d really thought about what I said:

Hey. Great response! You're totally right about the crucial difference being relative privilege. My little formal logic formulation should have included that, ie "Some members of PRIVILEGED group A (men) commit X (rape)", which would have meant that swapping 'men' for an ethnic group wouldn't have worked. Huzzah for civility!  

Re the article: I dont think I missed the point, really. I know the article isn't arguing women should be cautious in order to avoid rape. Men not raping is what stops rape. I totally agree here. But the article was explaining the author's/women's caution, and it was this caution that I was addressing. That is not to say I disagree with the caution, just that I was engaging critically with it. And now I feel a little silly that I didn't consider the power factor- which is one of the first things I should consider.....  

I saw this issue as part of the interaction of left-leaning people/politics and probability/statistics. I have an issue that I dont know how to resolve. People use probability all the time to help make decisions, and also to be racist. I think the left isolates people (and thus empowers the right) by not (in my opinion) sufficiently engaging with how people employ probability for their own safety. 

But the issue is so enmeshed with racism, that I dont know how to go forward. Perhaps postgrad will help me figure it out... Identity politics is so complex!

And as the conversation progressed, I realised that my friend was actually much more concerned about the implications of this type of reasoning in the context of racial stereotypes; than about critiquing the reasoning itself. We had a really interesting discussion about it – about the way that we, as pakeha, are socially conditioned to be cautious when we see, for example, young Māori men wearing hoodies late at night.

Are we justified in exercising caution? I would argue no – and my friend agreed, I think. Are we intuitively more cautious around people from racial minorities? Probably. Is this racist? Yes. The question then becomes, what can we do about this? How can we overcome and unlearn the implicit racism we have been taught from birth?

I think the moral of the story is twofold. One, it’s really interesting to look at different types of oppression and draw parallels between them. Two, this will only get us so far, and actually, in many cases, analogies are difficult. It’s really important to remember that as a Pakeha woman, I will never understand racial oppression; just like men will never really understand sexism (although I have met a few who come close).

We can only empathise, listen and learn – and use our positions of privilege to challenge our own (individual and collective) stereotypes and misconceptions.