One major challenge, to be detailed in this blog entry, is realising how women are treated in society, and by me, and how men, like me, often feel as if we have a right to tell women what to do. Take my humiliating, and humbling, experience below.
Who am I to....
Last week, I stumbled upon a blog by Marina S on "Portable Safe Spaces and Occupying the Occupation" via the #OccupyBristol Twitter Feed.
The blog clearly outlined a problem: women were not feeling safe on the Occupy Bristol site. It clearly proposed one possible solution: women could form a closed group on the site, a group that would aim to maintain a certain number of women in that group at all times. In this way, the blog concluded, no single woman would be made to feel vulnerable. Simple, right?
Wrong. Along comes an arrogant, meddling, white privileged male ass (me) with a response that went something like:
I think this idea is great, but it sounds like the group is women-only. I'm a feminist man, and I would like to offer my support. (I have since deleted this post as I was too ashamed to leave it up.)
Essentially, though I hadn't seen it yet, I had said:
But, what about me? What about men?
For now, I simply felt as if I was offering constructive criticism, as no doubt other men also felt who made their own suggestions, only to find themselves met with cutting replies, replies that were venomous, scathing, enraged.
I was left shocked, stunned, baffled by these responses, not just from Marina, but others too. My replies detail this disbelief and are still available to see. They chronicle my struggle to see Marina's point of view, my struggle to understand why Marina was so upset. On top of my confusion, clouding my mind, was my ego, deeply bruised, revolting against the public scolding. I spent a sleepless night and a tense day turning over in my head what I had said, and how Marina had responded. Surely, I hadn't said anything that bad. Surely...
Thankfully, I brooded. I took a look around. I came across another blog by Marina, her SlutWalk Bristol speech, which, apart from being passionately and brilliantly written, refers to the harsh fact that there are 94,000 rapes in the UK every year. Accounting for repeat victimisation, that means 55,000 women are raped - every year. The worst thing about this figure is that a third of people will believe that the woman was somehow to blame for being raped. Surely the only person to blame for the rape is the rapist, right? Apparently not, according to popular opinion, because if she flirted she's partly to blame, or if she was too drunk, she's partly to blame. In any case, here was a reality I did not have to think about every day of my life. I was not vulnerable to being one of these 55,000 rape victims. Why? Because I am a man.
So, now I had some numbers, some facts. Uncomfortable facts. I still struggled to understand what was wrong with my comments, though. Why had I provoked Marina to reply so aggressively? What, if anything, had I done wrong? I was tempted to dismiss her as an angry feminist, but no, that was too easy. I wanted to understand.
I continued looking around, clicking through links on Marina's pages, and so on. Then, my next deeply educational moment came along, via an article I found, unapologetically titled, 'Dick Privilage'. Here, the author, Forty Shades of Grey, addresses Richard Dawkins, who attempted to downplay, indeed deny, the reality of Rebecca Watson's discomfort when she was propositioned at 4am in an empty elevator by some guy, after having given a talk on how uncomfortable it made her feel to be sexualised. Forty Shade of Grey speaks to Richard, thus:
You don’t get obscenities shouted at you in public because you dare to be out of the house while in possession of a vagina. You don’t get men refusing to move out of your way at work so you have to rub up against them to get somewhere you need to be immediately. You don’t get forced to not wear a top you like because it’s a bit low cut and the last time you did a customer literally stared at your tits for two hours solid. You don’t get patronised because your reproductive organs are on the inside. You don’t get seen as a being that is only good for sex one minute and reviled the next if you dare to reveal yourself as a sexual being. You don’t get forced into choosing between a career and a family. You don’t get told that you won’t succeed because of those pockets of fat and muscle on your chest. You don’t get treated as a member of a minority group when you in fact, form the majority of the population. You don’t get accused of being a hysterical, over-emotional, boring bitch when you don’t want to fuck someone and you don’t want to be propositioned for sex at 4 in the morning in a hotel after you JUST SPOKE about how uncomfortable this made you feel. You also, and I can not make this clear enough, do NOT FUCKING GET to tell people who this stuff actually happens to on a daily basis how to feel.
Something clicked: it was the 'you don't get to tell her how to feel'. Marina's reply to me came to mind:
John: oh my god. Why did you have to barge into this conversation and demand to be catered to? I am apoplectic with rage at you right now, for smearing your privilege like a turd all over my monitor. It will be up to the women in the group to decide what your role is, it is NOT for you to make a case. Argh. (emphasis added)
I saw, vaguely, that I was trying to have a say about something I had no personal experience of and had no real right to direct. More than that, there was something about control here. Forty Shades of Grey has quite clearly painted a picture of a woman not in control of her environment, her culture. She had no control over being seen as less-than within her society. Then, along comes me, white privileged male, who's never experienced such marginalisation, misogyny, and abuse, convinced I should have a say in what Marina's group do or do not do in order for them to feel safe.
A rather simple idea was slowly dawning on me: Women, just because they're women, feel less safe than men, because men are convinced that they have a right to dominate women, just because they are men.
And what was I doing? I was trying to tell Marina what to do. Oh, Christ, I thought, I think I get it. I was mirroring the problem, not the solution. My values, which I had assumed beneficent and relatively progressive and egalitarian, began to reveal themselves as nothing other than "privileged". Even though I wasn't telling Marina what to do because I thought she was less than, I was still trying to tell her what to do within a culture of male privilege which has for centuries dominated her as a woman, just because she is a woman. Her rage, I realised, was perfectly understandable.
Finally, it was the following analogy, contained in the comments of Forty Shades of Grey's blog:
An analogy: For arguments sake, take it as a given that only 0.01% of the handguns in the world are loaded.
You're in a lift, with a man. He pulls out a pistol, cocks it, and aims it at your head.
Do you decide it's statistically okay, and that no harm will come to you, or do you worry, at least a little bit, that you might be about to have your head blown off.
The pistol is analogous to a cheesy pick-up line from a stranger in a cramped place, with no exits.
An unloaded pistol is a line from a man who doesn't intend to take things further if a woman says no.
A loaded pistol is a line from a man who intends rape.
Question: How do you tell the difference and if you can't, why would the perceived possible-threat from the unloaded-gun man be non-zero?
This ended, for me, some decades long tensions I had been carrying, often emerging in angry deabtes with my feminist partner, about how I always felt insulted and outraged when women talked about men as rapists. But I'm a man, I'd say, angrily. And I'm not a rapist. I don't want to be seen as a rapist! But, now I was thinking: And? What's your point, John? Some men are rapists, clearly. And quite a few actually, if 55,000 women get raped every year. Women don't know which man is the rapist, and which man is not. It's not for you, John, like Dawkins, to go about demanding women not feel scared of you, or uncomfortable, because you're not a rapist. They do feel scared, uncomfortable, unsafe, because some men are rapists.
It was all falling into place.
I was seeing differently, but I was also behaving differently: Walking across the road, I noticed a women walking along the path I was about to join. It was dark. Previously, I wouldn't have thought anything about it, and, as she was a little ahead of me, I would have ended up walking behind her, only to feel annoyed by the thought 'maybe she feels scared by me walking behind her' because I don't want to be seen as a rapist. This time, however, I simply accepted that she might feel uncomfortable if I ended up walking behind her on a dark street with not many people around. So, I sped up a bit and joined the path walking in front of her. End of problem. Simple. Afterall, which is more important, my desire to not be seen as a potential rapist, or her fear that I might be just that, a rapist?
Naturally, I hesitated a while before openly apologising to Marina on her blog - blasted pride! - but I found myself arguing against other men who were making comments similar to my original remark: telling Marina how she and her group should be on the Occupy Bristol site.
All of this, of course, was a very humbling experience. I still feel rather uncomfortable about it. As a counsellor, Health Care Assistant and Support Worker, I had hoped to be more aware and sensitive to the experiences of the marginalised, having worked with the sexually, emotionally and physically abused, people seen as having "mental health issues," and people with learning difficulties. All these people are to some extent excluded or marginalised by society. I had even called myself a feminist! But, I had discovered just how much my privilege had blinded me to their experience.
I feel very grateful for Marina's replies to my initial stupidity, in that their venom catapulted me into serious internal conflict. I am very aware, however, of how difficult it was for me to see something so very obvious, that I was trying to dominate Marina, that I felt somehow privileged to do this, when actually I should have simply supported Marina in her aim to feel safe in a movement she wished to support, in whatever way she and her group thought best. Afterall, they are the one's who feel unsafe, not me. That's troubling, that I was so basically blinded.
I'm glad though, that there are others like Marina out there, who are prepared to take a stand against idiots like me, to challenge us, in whatever way they see fit, to change the way we approach the whole issue of gender privilege in society. Thank God, there are such people!
So, finally, I would just like to say how grateful I am to all the people involved in this change in my perception, the men and women who wrote the blogs and comments that came together to bring about this altered perception. I plan to keep a watchful eye on myself in this regard in the future. And also, within the Occupy movement and beyond, I plan to simply support women, and other marginalised groups, to express themselves in whatever way they see fit, and, basically, to avoid sticking my oar in where it doesn't belong.
I am deeply sorry.
