"The women of Bikini Kill let guitarist Billy Karren be in their feminist punk band, but only if he's willing to just "do some shit." Being a feminist dude is like that. We may ask you to "do some shit" for the band, but you don't get to be Kathleen Hannah."--@heatherurehere


Thursday, September 13, 2007

Ally Work: Argument and Influence

The recent dustup that started as an innocent posting of a puppy picture on feministing that has blown up into a pretty angry 'discussion' has got me to thinking about how we all communicate with each other, the responsibility of feminists to each other in general, and the responsibilities of feminist allies to communicate well with each other and the larger world. Recently, Geo expressed some disappointment with the community aspects of Feminist Allies as agroupblog--I don't think he'd mind my mentioning that he felt a lack of community here. And I think there is a decided lack of community here--part of that is just blogging reality (we're all busy), part of it is personality quirks (we interact and communicate in various ways) but part of it probably has to do with lack of direction as far as what allies (and feminists in general!) ought to be doing, at least as far as my understanding of it all. So I've begun thinking of narrowing focus over here, of thinking more about what I (we?) want to do here, and about the larger question: What are the best ways for feminist allies to go about trying to change the world?

Framing Feminist Work as Ally Work
One of the reasons that I frame the flavors of feminism that I embrace from the perspective of an ally is that I think doing so pays tribute to some of the intricacies of working passionately on something in the face of not always being explicitly invited to the party, of feeling directly influenced by something on a deep level and wanting to influence right back. I also frame things this way because I think men are in a particularly interesting position to change the minds of other men as regards feminism--because patriarchy is so ingrained, female feminists have some roadblocks set up before them in terms of changing the minds of men, roadblocks set up explicitly and implicitly by some of the basic structures of culture itself. Put more bluntly: It's possible that many men are more likely to listen to other men about feminism than they are to listen to women about feminism.

Choosing an Audience
This is not a happy thought. It sort of pisses me off that it might be the case, but really it's just a vestige of the current social system, an accident of history that comes from a long, long period of patriarchy. It's something that feminists have to face up to, and make decisions about, if one of their goals is to influence those who don't (yet) agree with them. I think many feminists understand this, and do make choices based on the current situation. Sometimes they choose to not want to influence men so much (i.e. radical feminists often see changing the minds of men as merely a possible byproduct of changing the world so that it's not so misogynist). Sometimes they choose to keep men in the mix, but not focus so much on men, since in many ways the focus of everything is often on men. Some feminists (bell hooks comes to mind) get a lot of flak for suggesting that we need to enlist men as allies just as much as we need to enlist women. I imagine there are some feminists who focus on men almost exclusively, thinking to change things from within the current power structure (though I haven't met any, which is interesting). I think all of these strategies are valid, that they all get some work done. I try to not fault anybody for choosing one over the other, even though I, of course, fall into the camp that thinks enlisting men as allies is one of the more important things we can do as feminists (especially as feminist men). Even if we share a lot of the same concerns, our paths for getting to our goals may be different.

How Do We Go About Actually Changing the World?
But aside from basic questions about choosing an audience as writers (and activists) who do feminist work, what are the best ways to actually change the world? What are the best ways to change minds? What are the 'central' causes we need to champion? When is it ok to not respond to criticism, to draw lines, and when do we owe it to each other, to feminists and self-identified non-feminists to respond?

I understand that there are no blanket answers here, though there may be some general guidelines. And one of the most general tenets of what I want to accomplish is this: I think that passionate-though-reasoned discussion (not simply laying out arguments) can get some work done. At times I wonder if I'm of the disposition to get any of this work done, because I oftentimes feel like I'm not getting my ideas across, or that I'm not understanding the ideas of others. But I'm convinced that such discussion is possible, and worth a lot of work--and, I'm convinced that such discussion can actually change people's minds.

It's not that only discussion can do this. Sudden changes in one's life can cause basic opinions to change. Some opinions tend to change 'naturally' with age and experience. But I also think that discussion, when it's enjoined by people who care about each other as people, who respect each other to a large degree as people, can get us somewhere. Not all of the time. Not in every way. But I wouldn't spend so much time writing if I didn't think that I might, at times, be able to give a take on something that somebody else maybe hasn't thought of, if I didn't think that something I say might lend itself to changing minds.

Of course, writing--and blogging in particular--isn't always about changing minds. Sometimes it's about cheerleading and preaching to the choir. And there are lots of times and places for that. It's good to feel a sense of community, and preaching to the choir can serve that purpose. I am still suspicious when people seem to be only preaching to the converted, but I also see that there is a lot of good to be done by doing so, some of the time. And, frankly, the jury is still out on whether or not blogging engenders discussion, in my mind. Short, angry posts seem to get a lot more attention, and more "discussion" than longer, well-reasoned arguments tend to get. There is kindling enough for flamewars forever and on into eternity, probably, for as long as the Interweb exists, because of the nature of the medium. (Of course, impassioned, angry responses to the opinions of others aren't only happening in the land o' blogs. It happens in classrooms, on TV, and even among my close friends at the dinner table.)

How Do We Go About Changing Minds?
Despite all of this, I still think that discussion, with respect and care, can change minds. My opinion in this regard is probably partly because of my background in academic philosophy, which sort of hinges itself on the idea that communication of ideas can change minds (though some philosophers would disagree). But part of why I believe this is simply from experience. I have changed, in part, because people have pointed out blind spots to me, because people have offered perspectives that I didn't think of (or didn't have access to). Discussion has increased my understanding of things, and it has increased my ability to empathize with others. So one way in which I think we go about changing minds, the main way for me, is to talk, talk, talk. That doesn't mean that I will discuss anything ad nauseum with anybody--we all draw our lines, based on limits on our time, as well as lines based on moral intuitions (I don't, in general, tend to care to take time to try to change the minds of hardcore misogynists, for instance).

6 comments:

geo said...

Jeff,

I appreciate you approaching a tough topic and doing so well with it!

I would like to suggest a number of areas that I find very important:

1.) Men working locally with other men - defining locally may vary - but for those of us in major urban areas this generally would be within our area or part of our area.

2.) Supportively confronting each other (men) - meaningfully listening and sharing kudos and disagreement - being sensitive to the feelings and honest.

3.) Really digging into issues in our work - no matter what the issues may be and

4.) Being supportive allies of others - on their issues

5.) Being allies of women, girls and boys - but not confusing this with cozying up to Women - for "fitting in" (which often means seeking warm and fuzzy feelings which may not be helpful for us.)

We need to build up - from the local and the major issue(s) we work on to the Larger Picture - having or working towards being grounded.

Thanks again!

Anonymous said...

Yeah, I still feel like a very young feminist/ally so I only have inklings, and they are maybe more specific than you were wanting, but here goes...

1) As geo said, confronting other men. I'm not sure whether sensitivity is always needed. Sometimes just speaking your mind and leaving it at that can be effective. Men can often respect that.

2) Checking our privilege. The checklists are a great place to start. This is a constant struggle. I'm probably sexist and racist every day.

3) Balancing the scales. Use your privilege to amplify a marginalized voice. Donate the extra $0.23 you earn on the dollar to women's organizations.

4) Stop raping/sexually coercing women. I need to blog about this soon, because I've been thinking about it A LOT. But I'm quite certain almost none of our hands are clean here.

5) Learn to recognize sexism in culture (movies, music, etc). Boycott sexist stuff. Support feminist stuff. The cast of Star Trek is basically all male (except what, the doctor and the bartender?) Buffy is 50/50.

6) Shutting up and listening. Realize when you have decided your own voice is more important than a woman's and shut up. Realize that taking a conversation in a different direction than what a woman intended is a form of silencing her.

7) Stop consuming porn.

Those, off the top of my head, are the kinds of things I think feminist/ally men should be doing.

geo said...

Erik,

Your words above were Great! In my #2 - I wasn't clear - what I meant - was supportively confronting our Male Allies - such as Men we might be working with. I think it important to support - our allies.

Confronting "other" men is important. How we do it can also be important. Where we come across as condescending and really don't speak clearly about Specific Things we object to - as opposed to the Men Themselves - what we may do tends to feed our own egos, rather than being helpful.

Saying for Example something like: "You Sexist Bastard" - or similar - speaks clearly to our Displeasure - but doesn't speak to Whatever Said Man might have said - that ticked one off.

What you said was highly insightful and impressive! Don't apologize for your age or imply that it gets in your way because you obviously have taken in a lot of great insights and feelings!

Thanks@

Anonymous said...

Well, if it is any consolation, Jeff, our philosophical conversations about womens' fear in the dark awhile back helped me the following semester in my Foucault class.

It also made me want to go back and read/re-read through the Philosophy Canon to fill in some gaps.

Jeff Pollet said...

Thanks for the comments, all. I think it's interesting that, regarding my post which is partly about how to interact with other men and change some minds, we end up with some confusion around communication between men right off the bat!

What I mean is that I don't think we have good, rule-of-thumb strategies for interacting with other men around this stuff, men who are and who aren't feminists included. Geo supports more 'supporting confrontation', for instance, while Erik isn't sure whether sensitivity is always needed.

I think one of the things I really want to think about is how much sensitivity is needed, given our audience choice (people we tend to agree with or people we tend not to count as different audiences) and our goals (do we want to change minds more than we want to get our points across? do these two goals always dovetail, or do they always divide us?).

Thanks for all of the suggestions. I'm for most of them, though I think stuff like how we confront other men, how to deal with porn, and even pop culture feminist analysis gets pretty complex pretty quickly (on ST:TNG for instance, there was also Troi and Tasha Yar, who was the security chief; also, arguably the most popular ST show, Voyager, had a woman captain who was the centerpiece of the show).

Maybe I'll take some of your suggestions and tease some of that out...

Anonymous said...

I've been using this blog to gather strategies.

So, two things:

In a confrontation with an anti-feminist or a non-ally, I've found that "Not cool, man," works every time I had to use it.

Jeff, your description of your mother's reaction to your Lego toys inspired me to start teaching feminism to the two young sons of a couple of friends of mine. "Is that fair to say that Mrs. B-- has to do all that by herself?" and so on.