Blind Prophecy

I’ve been short on time all week and it looks like its only going to get more crazy from here until June 12 (Utah Pride). There is a big activity of some sort or another every weekend along the way and almost every weeknight evening has a meeting of some kind going on. My calendar looks like a novel.

At my “Welcoming Congregation” class last night, we were discussing the common elements of oppression and explaining how the different types of oppression feed into one another. We used an essay by Suzanne Pharr (“Common Elements of Oppression” from Homophobia: A Weapon of Sexism) to discuss concepts of a defined norm or dominant paradigm, internalized oppression, horizontal hostility, assimilation and tokenism. I can’t say the class reacted well to the essay. They felt her overly hostile and guilty of stereotyping the white, heterosexual male. They also thought she presented these oppressions (sexism, racism, heterosexism, etc.) as a vast conspiracy theory instead of individual decisions.

It’s not the first time I’ve seen this kind of reaction to the concept of institutional oppression. I don’t know why there is a knee-jerk reaction among some people to reject the idea that religious institutions, political systems and corporate structures are built to keep out “the other.” The people who struggle with this concept seem to be the ones who really want to beleive that the solution to oppression is personal and individual. It really isn’t. Even the most self-aware members of dominant groups will perpetuate their own power structures and “norms.”

I think the problem some of my class members were having was that ackowledging institutional oppression means its not enough for them to merely be tolerant in their own lives. They, as a member of the dominant group, have an obligation to challenge the system which benefits them.

For example, when I have spoken of marriage equality, I have asked who would be willing to allow gays and lesbian people to marry. Depending on the crowd, a number of hands go up. When I asked who would protest the continued oppression of gay and lesbian people by refusing to get married themselves (as just one possible reaction), well, not so many hands this time.

To complicate matters further for the class, we also addressed tokenism and assimilation. The idea that to overcome oppression, the oppressed must mimic the dominant group, and that we hold up as good examples those who do this.

Coming back to the marriage concept – what if I question people about how they would feel if most gay & lesbian people decided that they would rather live a life of short-lived relationships without any long-term commitment? What if I ask them if they could celebrate a committed triad of individuals the same way they would celebrate a couple? What if I ask them to celebrate a person who openly decided all they wanted in life was a series of anonymous one-night-stands. The further I get from the dominant cultural “norm,” the harder it was for people to cope with their own feelings.

Anyway, there are one or two people in the class who are really looking for an opportunity to justify their own attitudes. “Isn’t it true that stereotypes are based in some kind of fact?” “Is it so wrong to ackowledge that Asian-American kids, in general, work harder in schools than Hispanic kids?” “Aren’t we being hypocritical to pretend we don’t know that the stranger we’re speaking to on the phone is black?”

I tried to communicate that all stereotypes, no matter how “based on experience” or “common sense,” are still tools of oppression meant to pigeonhole all members of that group and dehumanize them. We struggled with this especially when it came to sexism.

As our sexism exercise, I had them read aloud statements drawn from a hat and discuss their reactions. Things like “Big boys don’t cry” and “Good girls don’t get dirty” all the way up to “The way she dresses, you can tell she likes ‘it’” and “You gotta sow some wild oats before you get married.” The one that really provoked some strong feelings in class, though, was: “Men and women are just built differently. Men are stronger, the natural provider and protected. Women are smaller and nurse the babies, so they have a maternal instinct to nurture and care for children.”

Well, it just seems like such a logical, reasonable, and scientifically justifiable thing to say, doesn’t it? These aren’t crazy man-made rules to keep us in our place… this is what evolution and/or deity designed our bodies to do, right? “But what,” I asked them, “about the people for whom this is not true? Not all women are maternal and nurturing. Not all men are suited to protecting and providing. Are we saying that this way is the ‘right’ the ‘correct’ and the ‘natural’ way to be? And those who are different are then, by definition, ‘wrong,’ ‘incorrect,’ or ‘unnatural?’”

As these sorts of classes always do to me, I learned a bit about my own assumptions and attitudes along the way. For example, I used to get into heated discussions with an ex about my “gatekeeper mentality.” I was trying to diversify the groups I was in and the place I worked by seeking out people of color. I said things like, “if we can’t find good leaders, we’ll train them.” I never understood why he thought that to be racist. Then last night, like a bolt of lightining, it hit me that I was trying to 1) assimilate them into the way “we” do things, and 2) create token positions. I’ll admit that I’m a little lost, now. How does one encourage and desire diversity without feeding into the oppression through assimilation and tokenization? I’d really like to have people of color better represented at the GLBT Community Center, for instance, or among the writers for my paper. So how do I seek out more diversity without dehumanizing people of color? How do I make these groups welcoming but not patronizing?

Anyhoo… back to the grindstone. TTFN.

Filed under: livejournal by Jere Keys