Intersectional conversations - feminsm

 

Intersectionality

 

I thought I’d posted on this subject before, but couldn’t find anything, so here goes! Thank you to Jo, WLN, Elyssa for the Feminist conversations that got the ink flowing today. Ellyssa's presentation really made me think about how unsafe we can be when oppression isn't questioned.

 

Two conversations in particular initially prompted my reflection on this subject… The first is a known celebrity stating that homophobia is worse than any other characteristic oppression. The second, an anti-racist making an argument against racism in an ableist way. Both left me pondering the reasons for my discomfort.

 

Oppression, as I read it, is rarely not intersectional! The idea of being caught between two roads isn’t enough for me, some of us are spinning on a veritable roundabout. I committed years back to making the learning space as safe as I possibly could, to do this I had to understand that all forms of discrimination are despicable, and therefore need addressing with an equitable amount of energy. The question I think we cannot answer is which bad intent is worse. By definition, it’s the perpetrators’ bias or prejudice that fuels hate – speech or behaviour. If I’m smacked in the head, whether it’s sexism or ableism, the harm is painful. Whether people know they are being ableist or sexist is also a moot point. I’m not keen to stick around to find out. I think we can say that those who face several types of aggressions daily, some ableist and some sexist, sit in the middle of two streams of oppression. A disabled woman will be far more likely to experience more than those facing sexism alone, and black disabled women far more again. Likelihood is not certainty, but the maths seems reasonable.  The cumulative nature of oppression is critically important here. I’d seek to interrupt any aggression and would strive to incorporate this acknowledgement in my practice because multiple identities are more likely across populations. The disabled population is diverse, some people identify others don’t, with these individuals also facing racism, classism, homophobia, religious intolerance, ageism…. Greater diversity within means possibly more subtle categories within categories [none sub-categories and equally important]. What I’m trying to get at is a notion of compounding and interrelated aggression, these increasingly well evidenced by testimony and hate crime statistics. This evidence needs to inform my practice, to respect and keep any chosen combination of identity safe in the room. I do this by adding and interchanging different characteristics to examples.. black women, gay friends, and senior working-class colleagues  for example. The inference may appear subtle, but I’m being thanked, so the intent is noted by those who want it recognised. 

 

Imposing a hierarchy is dangerous, therefore using the same list repeatedly in the same order, will solidify a hierarchy even unintentionally. Statements such as: “we will get to ableism eventually”, don’t help either. At worse those who identify feel marginalised to the point of exclusion, and disabled people facing racism, sexism, homophobia, or discrimination based on religious and family choice 'erased’ in conversation altogether.

 

I’m getting to point two. Where lists exist by factor of having to write in sequence, the idea of continuums, and false dichotomies, are somewhat pushed upon us. Black or not, gay or not, old or not… [et j’en passe].  Very easily identifiable in the disability literature emerging from other studies is a lack of acknowledgement that disabled people too face classism, ageism, homophobia…  where lists may belong in the introduction, anti-ableism is quasi absent in the analysis and the discussion. This becomes a significant issue when arguments employed to articulate the safety of one group is relies on how able, normal, or intelligent they are. Using ableism in wording, ideology, theory and bad synthesis, is likely to compound issues and alienate individuals. See growing literature on homophobia and racism in feminist spaces. I am not alone in resenting the but x or y is normal, unlike disabled people [who are not I presume?].

 

On reflection, I think I failed in my thesis to express my intersectional intent correctly – certainly within the scope of effort. While I was aiming to express the disabled population as diverse, I tried to speak from the roundabout, without being able to address each protected characteristic in the analysis. While I clearly stated that the disabled population was as diverse as any other, I couldn’t ensure I’d read enough critical literature relating to each strand under the Act even. Therefore covering all angles, at least 9 roads - that’s 81 in-betweens, was Impossible given mole-hours. I endeavoured to incorporate critical race and critical gender, but my fluency on other groups was lacking at the time - I have sought to remedy this as time permits. As I advise my students, define what you can do rather than expand on what you could do. My angle could have been better defined between race, gender or/and disability, a unique perspective among many others. From this angle, similarities and differences are numerous enough, so exploring one defined field is an acknowledgement of those beyond within a far richer landscape. Each group, again, a richer population within shifting patterns of culture in the field. 

 

The curse of dialling up

 Sensitivity 

"You’re a sensitive tool!"; was not the accolade I expected, but I’ll take it! I did laugh, and still do.

The problem with English is that meaning is often fluid, vague and circumstantial. The same word, sensitivity say, can mean weak, fragile, vulnerable and painful. In French, by contrast, interchangeability is less easy. You say one thing, you will not mean three others. 

I’ll be the first to say I’m sensitive, it was a running joke while I was at school, and appeared on every report. Then it was used to describe my failure. My inability to not cry while being taunted, denigrated and rubbished. If only it had been the students.

Today I use sensitivity very differently to describe a heightened sense of pain. Having been kicked on the same spot for decades, if embarrassed, I know it’s a response not a failing. Had I not been abused, I no doubt would be more able to mask my hurt?

So tool? I hear you cry. As researcher, I spent years dialling up my ability to see certain things. This sensitivity was hugely useful when thinking about the culture and language in different spaces. Feeling the vibe, seeing the architecture, the decoration, and hearing the storytelling, are essential to the capture and the analysis of space in a place. Being able, then, of contrasting and comparing one with other spaces. Initially very difficult, slowly technical know-how allowed finesse, if not mastery! 

My sensitivity to ableism was honed. From "I have no idea why I feel safer here!” I became able to articulate more succinctly exactly why the conversation and environment enabled a sense of belonging. Sadly, this increasingly made me aware of what didn’t help, what made me fearful or angry. The sensitive-tool is now a vigilante being, able to spot a whiff of injustice at 100 meters - or via zoom.

I’m struggling to desensitise! It’s difficult to unsee, unhear, and unfeel. So I’m aware how unpleasant my perspective may be to others… pointing out sexism,racism, homophobia, ageism equally rattles privilege, it’s uncomfortable! I feel I'm shrieking, and I feel increasingly vulnerable - in the Brown sense.

In addition, I’ve noticed a very real decline in my ability to shut-the-f-up. It’s not that I feel more angry, sad, or hurt; so much as I do not have the energy to silence my feelings. The juice needed to employ the emotional labour involved is scant, getting scanter. My body can no longer contain its movement, as CP ticks escape, so too do my words. 

Too honest? Yes probably! But my sensitivity would be attenuated in a world less violent towards those of us most familiar with hate - in all its subtle forms.

 Le trou-ble with learning!!

 

Each time I do a disability equality presentation, workshop or supported conversation I observe those learning going through some stages. It wasn’t until I’d heard James Nottingham speak several times that I noticed these mirrored the stages of the Learning Pit.  Encouraging a comfort with the emotional challenge of questioning the meaning of disability has certainly become part of a more intentional way of working. That is to say, I now sit more easily in the pit, resisting an urge to simplify, explain or correct thinking, before I support people to find a way out. 

 

Starting top left, with the orange baby! When asked to talk about disability, people are often fearful.  Because they can’t yet grasp the ideas they may need to consider, they can react to the fear, instead of naming the assumptions they’ve picked up across a lifetime. These assumptions often include the idea that disability is a personal, or a health issue, maybe a problem for social care, but not within the remit of professional commitment or organisational duty. Sadly, beliefs such as these often sit far deeper in our hearts than in our heads, as worded thought. Therefore what is assumed aren’t even ideas we challenge for ourselves, they are often hidden so deep they can’t be questioned. The landscape we live in, the culture around us in conversation, text and media, informs our mindscapes, as we bathe in words and images we rarely question. When attention is drawn to certain distortions in storytelling, patterns will emerge they may not have been considered previously.  As we bathe in society’s culture, we pick up the very ideas that can prevent us from thinking about disability as a concept. Because many negative ideas slip past our attention, yet lodge in our hearts over the years, few appreciate disability as a knotty and complex discipline. Most will not be aware that assuming disability equates to illness, for example, tends to prevent them from approaching learning about it as they would other characteristic discriminations. Because viewed as a medical/ individualised problem, said assumptions place responsibility outside their professional duty… For a few, personal experience will trump alternative evidence, with the feeling ‘i know’ interrupting a search for more on the subject. For others, it simply has never been a question they’ve had to consider.

 

Moving on to blue baby, many will gasp when statistics, ideas and evidence are articulated. "OMG, I had no idea!" people whisper, when it is suggested that disability, for many can be a discipline, a form of activism, the personal experience of pain, hate speech or functioning. To align it to sexism, racism, classism, for example, viewed as multi-tiered oppression, ableism more specifically requires an understanding of bias, prejudice, discrimination, inequality and injustice. To be fair, I completely get that people may want to run for the hills. The magnitude of what needs to be understood, leaned through theory and evidence, and put into practice, can seem monumental.  The feeling also strengthens an initial reaction to dismiss, reject or select only parts of information - particularly if it resonates with their assumptions.

 

Green baby understandably is a confused, and fearful tot. Negative emotions can block learning, by extinguishing curiosity, playfulness and confidence. In the pit it’s easy to give in, moving back into our comfort zone. Returning to daily activity feels safer, more important, less disruptive to our professional lives. It’s an understandable response, but likely to stop people moving forward.  And move forward is imperative to redress the lack of parity - developing wider acceptance of diversity, fair working practice and systemic inequality.

 

Red babies know Big jobs aren’t necessarily harder than small ones, they just require far longer to get done. Hard work may take a little time but typically gets easier as the learning-change loop becomes a habit. Doing 30 mins a day, or 5 hours a week, soon adds up. Linking disability equality, to best practice, to better practice, will change understanding and culture over time. Equating ableism to sexism, racism, homophobia… does seem overbearing, but what starts as a mind-phase soon becomes a more cohesive landscape in which our own identities find belonging and respect.

 

 

Working together, blue babies makes light work of large tasks, it’s far easier to build shared knowledge in a frequent conversation than in one tedious talk. As teams share new ideas in regular dialogue, the team or organisation’s terms of reference change. Development of alternative terminology will enable more nuanced articulation of disability, more intentional interest in meetings and text and growing ability to challenge existing assumptions… orange babies remember them? Within a short time, not only does explicit direction grow, but so too does professional confidence. This will begin to allow practice, policy and ultimately culture to change in its acknowledgement of D/deaf and Disabled People’s 

 

Purple practitioners will feel increasingly confident, able to identify ableism in situations where it was previously hidden in plain sight. This sensitivity, available to all disabled or non, is a real benefit to those wishing to act as allies. Furthermore, on boards and in management teams, the ability to be critical of systems and institutional know-how, can lever huge progress towards equality within, and equity towards, society more widely. In line with the Sustainable Development Goals strategic conversation need to consider worldwide impact and sustainable development.

Hello!!!

This guest blog is written by Jenny Morrow, it’s a response to mine mentioning her: https://languageofrespect.blogspot.com/2021/01/hello-is-it-me-youre-looking-for.html

Hello! Is it me you’re looking for?

 

I had a childhood of bullying behind me when my family pulled up its roots and moved from Ottawa to a Paris suburb when I was 12 years old. I don’t really know why it was me and not someone else, but classrooms in the 70s, and I’ve no doubt still today, are dangerous places for whoever the crowd decides is different.

 

Mole remembers me walking into her classroom. I remember that moment too. A new canadienne on the first day of school, I’d let myself be buffeted around by the crowd of hundreds of middle-school-aged children in the schoolyard until the bell signalled the start of the day. The one girl I’d previously been introduced to pointed out Mole in the crows: “une anglaise.” Mole shifted the strap of her school bag and I noticed a jerkiness to the movement before she was swallowed up by the crowd. In the noise I couldn’t hear what the staff were calling. Somehow I found myself swept along in the current of students until, coincidentally, I wound up in Mole’s classroom. I noticed her in a desk a few rows ahead of me. 

 

At the front of the class, the teacher began taking attendance in rapid French. When no one answered to one of the names she called, the girl next to me poked me and whispered “c’est toi” (that’s you). I said “présente,” as I’d heard other girls say. Sometime later, the teacher again said something – the same name again – and was looking at me expectantly. I can’t remember what I said in reply. I do remember coming to the conclusion that, for now, I was going to be that person in this new classroom. Children are remarkably adaptable.

 

An hour into the morning, the school principal entered the class. I recognized her from the meeting I’d had in her office with my parents when they registered me. She had asked me if I was ready to work hard. I answered “oui” and she emphasized the question: “Very, very hard?” “Oui!” I repeated. Now, the principal and the teacher talked, the teacher pointed me out, and then the principal addressed me by my actual name and asked me to come with her. I’d blundered into the wrong class.

 

She led me down the stairs and out of the new wing of the school into an old wing to the class that would become mine for the rest of the year. I was assigned a desk next to a French girl who had lived in South Africa. Either because I was unfamiliar with South African English, or because her English was weaker than my French, after half an hour it was clear my French was stronger, and she and I never spoke English again.

 

Why did the school place me in a class with a French girl who had rusty English, instead of in a class with the one student who was in fact fully bilingual? I assume it was because they did not think that Mole would be able to provide suitable guidance or direction for me. How wrong they were.

 

Later that day I was wandering around the school during a recess from class, when I passed Mole on the stairs. “Hello!” she said brightly, and I returned the greeting. For some reason, we shook hands, and I moved on. At lunch, I followed a crowd of students into the cacophonous dining hall. Mole saw me enter and gestured emphatically to the empty chair beside her. Hers was the only friendly face I encountered on that confusing day, so to sit down beside her was a great  relief. Although we’d been classmates for only about half an hour, our friendship was cemented in that moment. Mole became my interpreter, guide, and above all, friend, in the bewildering and not always kind experience of being a foreigner in a large French school.

 

There were seven classes of our grade, each with some 25 students. How I ended up in the right wrong class, I’ll never know, but I know we were meant to meet.

 

Mole talks about our long lunchtime conversations. I too don’t remember the substance, but there was a lot of it, and we never lacked for things to say. One day, a French girl ran up to me and said something to me very rapidly. I was not used to Parisian French yet, so I politely said, “Pardon?” She laughed and ran away with her friends. Mole gestured for me to come away with her. When we were around a corner, she told me the girl had asked if I wasn’t tired of being a bastard. I didn’t even know who this girl was. Lucky for me, I had Mole to protect me. To keep me from feeling quite so alone.

 

I was aware that my friend had a disability. It’s not like I somehow didn’t notice, or was blind to her difference. When we visited on weekends and walked around town amongst people who didn’t know Mole, I’d sometimes see people rubbernecking as we passed. I wanted to yell, “Move along, there’s nothing to see!” but lacked the courage that a lifetime of daily discrimination had given my friend.

 

A year later, my family returned to Canada and I went to high school. Mole also left France to attend school in England. We both found ourselves in new schools with new peers. For myself, another year later I found myself once again the butt of crowd-mentality bullying that had dogged me throughout my childhood. Many times during the months of that campaign, I closed my eyes and reminded myself that I had one true friend, she just happened to be on the other side of the ocean. Mole mentions that my friendship taught her that she was worthy of friendship, but it was entirely both ways. I too knew that I was worthy of friendship because I had one friend who loved me as I was. Like Mole, I did eventually make other friends. But I’m grateful to her for letting me know that friendship was an option that was available to me as it was to her.

 

And the title of our blog posts? It’s from Lionel Ritchie, of course. Imagine two girls hanging out in a 1980s teenage bedroom, nail polish, make-up, current fashions, heart-throbs on the wall, and a days-long game of rummy, with Lionel Ritchie crooning his lovesick Hello, an appropriate soundtrack to the feelings of unrequited love so familiar to two teenagers. The scene is almost a stereotype of 1980s adolescence

 

Mole writes that she was in this school as a result of a fight her parents had to wage with the administration. It was one of a number of fights that were fought on her behalf as she grew up in the 1970s and 80s. Just one of the many ways that Mole, and families like Mole’s, were trail blazers, chipping away at the institutions of exclusion to make things easier for those who came after. I compare this to my own experience of acceptance at the school. I wasn’t a “shoo-in.” The principal spoke to me very sternly to assess my level of French, and whether, I suppose, that despite being Canadian I had what it took to be successful in this school. But my parents didn’t have to fight for me. I pretty much needed to say that I was prepared to work hard, and doors were opened for me.