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.

Another world is on her way...

“Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness – and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we’re being brainwashed to believe. 



The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling – their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability. 

Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them. 

Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”

 – Arundhati Roy

Census.

Just finished filling it out, and its made me really angry for lots of reasons. Lets go through it by question and pick out some of the problems, shall we?

Question 3. Are you male or female? – This has had a huge campaign around it so don’t need to go into detail. But in brief – gender binary doesn’t exist, so lets stop pretending it does.

Solution: tick both boxes, as promoted by the two ticks campaign. Demand more options for next year – at the very minimum, an “other” box with a space to write in.

Question 11: Which ethnic group do you belong to? – The first option is NZ European, followed by Māori, Samoan, Chinese, Indian, etc.

This really astounded me. It is incredibly racist that NZ European is a category, while NZ Māori, NZ Chinese, etc are not. As if people of European descent somehow have a greater claim to NZer-ness. What about the Chinese people whose ancestors have been here since the 1860s? And of course the Māori people, tangata whenua of this land, who were here several hundred years before anyone else?!

I also think it would be helpful to distinguish between ethnicity and nationality, as these are completely different. My ethnicity is Pākehā (some would say European); my nationality is NZer. Many people of other ethnicities are also NZers. Others aren’t. This census does not distinguish between a person of Chinse descent whose family arrived in 1860 (and identifies as a NZer); and a Chinese person who came to live in NZ last year (and does not) – yet it does distinguish between a Pākeha who arrived in 1860 and a Dutch person who came last year.

I can’t see any explanation for this other than very deeply entrenched institutionalised racism.

Solution: I crossed out NZ European and wrote Pākehā. It’s the least I could do – doubt it will help much. It would be cool to get a campaign happening around this for next time, as it is a very serious issue that strikes at the heart of racism and colonisation in NZ.

Question 18: What is your religion? No option for atheist, which is not the same thing as “no religion”.

Solution: Not sure whether its better to pick “no religion” or “other” and write atheist. I suspect that the latter will be recorded as being a religion, adding to the total number of religious people, so unlikely to be helpful.

Question 19: Who do you live with? – More gender binary.

Question 23: Marital/civil union status. They only care about marriages and civil unions, not any other type of relationship, whether you have a girlfriend/boyfriend/lover/partner/etc/or several. Also don’t care how many times you have been married.

Question 25: If you are female, how many babies have you given birth to? Gender binary and stereotyping again. What if you are male but you used to be female, and have given birth? Why does it assume females have a stronger connection to babies than males do?

Questions 32-41: work.

So many problems here. Partly because I just started uni, and it asks me about the work I did last week, and the work I do “usually”, assuming it’s the same (question 40). It also assumes that my paid employment is the most important thing in my life – not my studies, or my unpaid internship.

By asking about the job I worked most hours in, it is ignoring the fact that I did 10 hours in one caregiving job, and about 12 hours collectively in 3 separate cleaning jobs. In fact lots of low-paid workers are have 2 or 3 jobs, doing the same or different things, and by only asking about one, lots of work people do will be completely invisible.

Question 41 only cares about how I got to my paid employment. Not to my unpaid internship, or to uni, or to the bank, or home again. I ticked “did not go to work” and “bicycle” – but really, if they wanted to know about transport, they could have phrased this heaps better.

Question 45: If unemployed, if a paid job had been available, would you have started last week? – Well, maybe it would depend on what the job was. Why the assumption that all unemployed people will either leap at the chance of whatever shitty job WINZ throws at them, or be lazy dole bludgers?

Ok, rant over. I know lots of people are feeling the same, so probably preaching to the converted anyway. Bring on the next census with a new government, and see if it asks us slightly more useful questions, which allow people to express who they actually are.