ibis--a page (or more, by now? "Jane, stop this crazy thing!!!") ago I am feeling a little attacked all over again on that topic, and once again feeling the need to back down. That alone indicates a possible problem, I think.
I agree that this is a problem, and I'm not sure what to do except to say that, first, We do need to remember to give both suppport for the emotional reality of any problem, something that women are traditionally expected to give but not receive, AS WELL AS providing ideas about how someone who's facing a quandry may be helped by reframing the discussion on new lines. And, second, thanks for digging out that old thread; it's been helpful and grounding.
Sometimes when we are deeply engaged with a certain kind of work (and I really am including myself in this 'us')--we're doing say feminist or anti-racist or anti-class work, we can come into a discussion like an avenging angel. Sometimes that desire to be the avenging agent of godliness becomes predominant, for me, over solving the problem. Its like we're in a competition to see who can be "the least racist white person around," for instance. Mostly I have no time for the PC Hell argument, but I know that self-righteousness is a very attractive drug, for me.
But LET ME BE VERY CLEAR: this is not to say that clear expressions of anger about a subject are wrong--taken to an extreme my argument might seem to leave the impression that the only "good" way of responding to an injustice is through some calm "professional," discretely-lowered-voice route.
Because there's all kinds of issues around that--women are readily labeled "shrill"; blacks in the US are often seen as "loud, complaining," gays as "whining," and working class people as one step above grammatically-challenged cave-dwellers, just to name a few problematic stereotypes that are used to try to enforce silence on people who are pointing out problems in the system. And if you inhabit more than one category at once, as most of us do, it can be really hard; double binds abound.
Identity is always implicated in public discussions, first off, both for those who are challenging the status quo and those who want to maintain the status quo. But identity is always more visible for the challengers than it is for those who wish to maintain the status quo.
So, truly, I think I can only judge with any certainty the way this issue works inside me. I know that sometimes my own indignation begins to tip some internal scale. It begins to be more about how I want to be perceived (e.g., "less racist than thou") than about actually trying to respond to a problem and help fix it. And I suspect that, when a painful personal issue is being brought up, that is particularly harmful.
And, as I mentioned, and I think this is one core issue for me: all this is entangled with expectations of "womanly sympathy" and masculine "certainty." Expectations for empathy are entangled with gender issues: traditionally women are under more pressure to be empathetic to men's struggles than vise versa. Personally, I feel this pressure every day of my life, I see it at work in my classrooms, and I think I'm seeing it, for example, in the "sexual coercion" thread. |
