It's International Women's Day, and Blog Against Sexism Day!
[It's also Estrogen Month here at Pen-Elayne, so feel free to peruse the EM posts I've done so far this month, and stay tuned for my Day 8 post.]
Today I'd like to discuss agency, defined here as "the state of being in action or exerting power" but which is simply the ability of any person to think and do for themselves. Agency is taken for granted by the Default groups in a given society (usually straight white males); it would be absurd to assume that a man could not think and act for himself, unless he were disabled or president. But the Other, the non-Default, has no such luxury much of the time. The Other is to be acted upon by the Default; the Other only has the agency that the Default cedes, and importance only if the Default grants it be so.
And here we are well into the 21st century with still too many Default members believing and acting this way, whether by word or deed. We're all too sadly familiar with the deeds, still-ongoing oppressive practices (some religious in origin, some cultural, none natural) that help men in societal power rob women of their safety and personal comfort and bodily autonomy. These practices cannot and should not be minimized. But language is important as well; while not life-threatening the way deeds can be, words often indicate an ingrained mindset that perpetuates sexist behavior and makes it harder to break the cycle because oftentimes the perpetrators aren't even aware they're thinking in a sexist way.
The first thing for a man to remember when trying to grasp the concept of women having agency is that It's Not About Him. Ilyka presents an excellent example of trying to explain this concept, in the form of a conversation she had with her significant other. Excerpts:
I learned a long time ago that the societal Default owns the language by which we communicate ideas, and so the Others must help the language itself evolve (not a difficult concept, language is always evolving) towards a more inclusive way of communicating. But something perhaps instinctual in us all (and certainly reinforced by socialization) rebels against even the thought of a loss of power or privilege, and refuses to allow that sharing does not equal loss. This knee-jerk reaction against sharing seems to come more from the Default (kids are often socialized that sharing is good, which continues to be encouraged for girls as they get older but not for boys).
So it is that the Default and representatives thereof create a fiction about "politically correct" speech rather than just saying "You know, these Others about whom we've been talking might have a point, and why go out of our way to be offensive if we can just as easily use common sense and common courtesy and communicate without pissing people off?" And they continue to assert their privilege to talk any gosh-darn way they want to, and so discourse breaks down still further and the gap between Default and Other widens that much more.
And this is not a left-right political thing, it's top-down, Default vs. Other. We've seen countless examples of it in the liberal blogosphere, where some consider it a badge of honor to glorify in George Carlin's Seven Dirty Words to counter the reactionary radical bloggers' glorification in ideas far more obscene and vulgar than words you can't use on network television. People circle their mental wagons around their right to be rude, particularly when it bothers those with whom they disagree but even when it bothers Others who are supposedly on "their side." And in asserting this right, they don't care or even see how they're denying agency to Others who have had very different experiences with the way language can victimize.
Again, Ilyka provides some context, in discussing the way one blogger refers to the "c" word as well within his right to use, among other words, "as a crotch-kick against pretension" and, besides, it's "just a fun word." Ilyka's simple response: "Sure it is, when you're a guy. When you've had it directed at you personally, not to refer to your parts but to reduce you to them, it's not such a blast," and goes on to observe that the "fun" meaning of the word "is achieved almost entirely from members of the class who have traditionally used the term, and scarcely at all from members of the class against whom it has been used." She despairs of liberal bloggers who throw a "neverending tantrum, weeping and wailing and gnashing teeth all over the internet, any time someone points out that their understanding of the context is incomplete due to the unavoidable limitations of their own lived experiences -- a point which should be obvious, and which any of these jackboot-licking nerds could easily prove or disprove merely by walking up to any large man of African-American descent and explaining to him why he shouldn't choose to find the n-word offensive." Or Photoshopped blackface, for that matter. I don't want to take too much of Ilyka's response out of context, so do read the whole post.
'Cause see, as long as the Default doesn't get that words matter, liberal Defaulters have no moral high ground on which to stand when they point out the absurdity of high school officials forbidding girls to use the word "vagina" during a reading of The Vagina Monologues (via Zuzu) or banning a Newbery-Medal-winning children's book in which the word "scrotum" appears.
As long as the Default gets to dictate the context of how words can be used and doesn't care what Others that context or those words might offend, they assert privilege and deny Others agency. The people whose agency affected by certain epithets ought to be the ones who decide how and when those epithets are employed, period. You the Default don't get to do that, any more than the Default gets to steal the Other's agency (and possibly job prospects) through recontextualizing photos without permission (accompanied, naturally, by the usual sexist language). This kind of speech is an unspoken privilege that must be relinquished -- shared -- in order to move beyond the kind of thought the language precipitates, and in order to begin to move beyond sexism.
[It's also Estrogen Month here at Pen-Elayne, so feel free to peruse the EM posts I've done so far this month, and stay tuned for my Day 8 post.]
Today I'd like to discuss agency, defined here as "the state of being in action or exerting power" but which is simply the ability of any person to think and do for themselves. Agency is taken for granted by the Default groups in a given society (usually straight white males); it would be absurd to assume that a man could not think and act for himself, unless he were disabled or president. But the Other, the non-Default, has no such luxury much of the time. The Other is to be acted upon by the Default; the Other only has the agency that the Default cedes, and importance only if the Default grants it be so.
And here we are well into the 21st century with still too many Default members believing and acting this way, whether by word or deed. We're all too sadly familiar with the deeds, still-ongoing oppressive practices (some religious in origin, some cultural, none natural) that help men in societal power rob women of their safety and personal comfort and bodily autonomy. These practices cannot and should not be minimized. But language is important as well; while not life-threatening the way deeds can be, words often indicate an ingrained mindset that perpetuates sexist behavior and makes it harder to break the cycle because oftentimes the perpetrators aren't even aware they're thinking in a sexist way.
The first thing for a man to remember when trying to grasp the concept of women having agency is that It's Not About Him. Ilyka presents an excellent example of trying to explain this concept, in the form of a conversation she had with her significant other. Excerpts:
"A lot of the guys written about on feminist blogs do things I would never do."It does get tiresome to have to explain this basic premise of "It's Not Necessarily About You" every time one discusses sexism, but it's necessary because so many people internalize privilege to the point where they don't even see it as privilege, but as How Things Are. If society revolves around the Default, then any Others must also revolve around the same Default and give due deference. It's frustrating; if men say things offensive to women all the time without the hint of apology, why are women expected to qualify every utterance they make about men?
"Then don't identify with them. It's not about you! You stand to pee, they stand to pee, beyond that, what's the commonality?"
"...but the way you express things sometimes, isn't it just making it easier for men to get defensive?"
"No," I said firmly, "What we aren't doing is taking care of them. Nurturing them. Putting their feelings first. Looking out for them, making things safe for them. We aren't making them the center. We're talking just the way we'd talk, the way we do talk, when y'all aren't around."
"And you know sometimes that gets ugly," I continued, "but the thing to do then is to remember: Everything else IS centered around y'all..."
I learned a long time ago that the societal Default owns the language by which we communicate ideas, and so the Others must help the language itself evolve (not a difficult concept, language is always evolving) towards a more inclusive way of communicating. But something perhaps instinctual in us all (and certainly reinforced by socialization) rebels against even the thought of a loss of power or privilege, and refuses to allow that sharing does not equal loss. This knee-jerk reaction against sharing seems to come more from the Default (kids are often socialized that sharing is good, which continues to be encouraged for girls as they get older but not for boys).
So it is that the Default and representatives thereof create a fiction about "politically correct" speech rather than just saying "You know, these Others about whom we've been talking might have a point, and why go out of our way to be offensive if we can just as easily use common sense and common courtesy and communicate without pissing people off?" And they continue to assert their privilege to talk any gosh-darn way they want to, and so discourse breaks down still further and the gap between Default and Other widens that much more.
And this is not a left-right political thing, it's top-down, Default vs. Other. We've seen countless examples of it in the liberal blogosphere, where some consider it a badge of honor to glorify in George Carlin's Seven Dirty Words to counter the reactionary radical bloggers' glorification in ideas far more obscene and vulgar than words you can't use on network television. People circle their mental wagons around their right to be rude, particularly when it bothers those with whom they disagree but even when it bothers Others who are supposedly on "their side." And in asserting this right, they don't care or even see how they're denying agency to Others who have had very different experiences with the way language can victimize.
Again, Ilyka provides some context, in discussing the way one blogger refers to the "c" word as well within his right to use, among other words, "as a crotch-kick against pretension" and, besides, it's "just a fun word." Ilyka's simple response: "Sure it is, when you're a guy. When you've had it directed at you personally, not to refer to your parts but to reduce you to them, it's not such a blast," and goes on to observe that the "fun" meaning of the word "is achieved almost entirely from members of the class who have traditionally used the term, and scarcely at all from members of the class against whom it has been used." She despairs of liberal bloggers who throw a "neverending tantrum, weeping and wailing and gnashing teeth all over the internet, any time someone points out that their understanding of the context is incomplete due to the unavoidable limitations of their own lived experiences -- a point which should be obvious, and which any of these jackboot-licking nerds could easily prove or disprove merely by walking up to any large man of African-American descent and explaining to him why he shouldn't choose to find the n-word offensive." Or Photoshopped blackface, for that matter. I don't want to take too much of Ilyka's response out of context, so do read the whole post.
'Cause see, as long as the Default doesn't get that words matter, liberal Defaulters have no moral high ground on which to stand when they point out the absurdity of high school officials forbidding girls to use the word "vagina" during a reading of The Vagina Monologues (via Zuzu) or banning a Newbery-Medal-winning children's book in which the word "scrotum" appears.
As long as the Default gets to dictate the context of how words can be used and doesn't care what Others that context or those words might offend, they assert privilege and deny Others agency. The people whose agency affected by certain epithets ought to be the ones who decide how and when those epithets are employed, period. You the Default don't get to do that, any more than the Default gets to steal the Other's agency (and possibly job prospects) through recontextualizing photos without permission (accompanied, naturally, by the usual sexist language). This kind of speech is an unspoken privilege that must be relinquished -- shared -- in order to move beyond the kind of thought the language precipitates, and in order to begin to move beyond sexism.
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