Show Notes
This discussion is inspired by We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and while the topics were inspired by the book, you do not need to have read the book to follow along with the discussion! A few of the topics that come up in today's episode are: male and female dominated roles and careers, female tendencies to be "like-able," the role that gender plays in every day interactions and why it should matter less, victim blaming, and how to talk about feminism, sexism, and gender equality with people who don't get it.
You can find the discussion questions here! Transcription
Mady: Welcome to our first ever book club podcast discussion. If you’ve been following along you’ll know that this month’s book is We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda, and I picked this book because I think it’s a great intro into women’s issues and feminism. Today I have Emily Pifer joining me for the discussion. Thanks for being here Em, can you introduce yourself?
Emily: Of course. Thanks for having me! It’s so good to be on the call and to join your community. This is a perfect text to start out with. I’m a writer and teacher, and I teach typically writing and composition at the college level. I’m starting a doctoral program in cultural rhetoric and composition in the Fall. My research will have a feminist perspective so it’s exciting to talk about this kind of stuff with you today. Mady: I’m excited to have you because you know more about feminism than I do! So you’ve been a great resource for me to have. Emily: It’s cool because I’m not super knowledgeable either, and it just kind of highlights to learning process. I don’t think anyone will ever be done learning about how to be a feminist. Mady: It’s so open ended. There are so many ways you can take it. It’s on going. Mady: So the questions that we’ll be discussing are available on the website. If you haven’t read the book yet, no worries, the discussion questions will be archived so you can still access them. Mady: Chimamanda went into her Ted Talk about feminism suspecting that it would be met with resistance. What kinds of preconceived notions do you think people have about feminism? What preconceived notions have you had about feminism? Emily: I think there are all the obvious ones: angry, man haters, shrill, ungrateful. Scholar Sarah Ahmed talks about the feminist killjoy which is a useful archetype. I think these preconceived notions come forma lack of understanding. Some people don’t have good intentions and are purposely misunderstanding. I think there are so many who just don’t understand it. I think there is also so much fear around it. Chimamanda talks about how if we subscribe to this idea it’s going to be a huge shift, so I think there is a huge fear which leads to these misconceptions. Mady: I agree. Just since I’ve opened this platform I’ve been able to talk to a lot of people about this. Once I describe what feminism is they agree with it, but they still don’t want to be a feminist. Emily: That’s interesting. I don’t know where that would come from. I think the class association and access to feminism - I didn’t even get to understand feminism until I was in a grad program - so a lot of people don’t have access to that or they don’t choose to go that route, so they’re closed off to feminism. As we know feminism was housed in academia. At its best it’s very accessible but at its worst it’s inaccessible to a lot of people. Mady: Did you have any preconceived notions about feminism before you took those academic courses? Emily: I can’t remember the first time I heard the word feminist. In my AP history class I don’t think we studies women’s rights at all. I think sexism was just a fact of life for me. I never questioned things. I don’t remember questioning that all the presidents are men. In the constitution the language is all men and we’re told it’s supposed to be universal. But I think we can look back and see it wasn’t universal. I didn’t see how feminism existed or where it was relevant until later. It’s sad but I think it’s normal. Mady: I like that you bring up that it wasn’t relevant to talk about sexism. When it is so pervasive and experienced so much, so it’s ironic that it was irrelevant. Emily: Right - it is SO relevant, I just didn’t know that I could question it. I think that has changed with the internet and young people having access to other ideas and lifestyles. But for a long time my life was just a lot smaller than I think it is for a lot of young people now which is a great thing about the internet. Mady: Agreed. Emily: Chimimamda expected her book to be met with resistance, and she was really surprised when she had a standing ovation from the audience. What do you think makes Chimamanda’s book and Ted Talk different? Mady: I think this is important to dive into because personally, right now when I try to build awareness I do meet a lot of resistance. I think she is very eloquent, and the examples she gave - you can’t argue with them. She gave concrete examples of sexism and the disparity between men and women. The way she presented those examples on the platform she chose is also important. If you are presenting arguments about feminism on reddit or twitter, you’re going to be met with resistance because of the people the message is reaching. While those people should be learning about feminism, I don’t think they’re ready for it. Chimamanda was presenting to people who were ready to learn which I think is part of the positive response she received. Emily: While she wasn’t necessarily catering to that audience, the audience was ready to hear it. How can we help people get ready? Mady: That’s a good question. Representation is huge. Just normalizing the issues. For example, with the Women’s Cup right now, everyone is on board with fixing the pay gap. But if that wouldn’t have happened - the same people who have always been fighting the pay gap would keep fighting the pay gap, and everyone else would keep discrediting them. Emily: That’s so true. If they didn’t win this wouldn’t have been a conversation - but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be happening. Emily: In the book, Chimamanda says, “To my surprise, my teacher said the monitor had to be a boy. She had forgotten to make that clear earlier; she assumed it was obvious.” … “If we do something over and over, it becomes normal. If we see the same thing over and over, it becomes normal. If only boys are made class monitor, then at some point we will all think, even if unconsciously, that the class monitor has to be a boy. If we keep seeing only men as heads of corporations, it starts to seem ‘natural’ that only men should be heads of corporations.” What roles/careers/titles are predominantly male? What roles/careers/titles are predominantly female?” Mady: Just going back to what you had just said about never being confronted with the issue of feminism and sexism growing up and the word “men” being so pervasive in important documents like the constitution - I think this is along so same lines. It’s such a small example, but she wanted it so badly and her teacher just casually says, “Oh ya, I assumed it was obvious that it had to be a boy.” That’s a powerful example because I can see so many similar situations where it doesn’t seem like a big deal - but those ideas that get compiled over and over again to the point where it’s something big like only men being the heads of corporations. Those things start with the little things like only allowing boys to be class positions and it perpetuates itself. Emily: So true. Mady: I found a very cool study a few weeks back that I’ll link to in the show notes, that says, “Within services, women’s share of employment is skewed toward health care, education, and hospitality rather than business services or communications. The fact that women in many societies continue to gravitate toward traditionally female-dominated roles such as teachers and nurses is not limiting in itself, but it points to less explored and more difficult pathways to alternative and potentially higher-paying opportunities in business. Some researchers attribute much of the wage gap between men and women to their concentration in particular industries and roles. One study found that occupational and industrial differences explain almost 50 percent of the wage gap in the United States.” Mady: That hit home for me because I am a teacher. I just think about how the examples I had growing up - not that there is anything wrong with being a teacher - primarily all of my teachers, I had lots of family members who were female educators. It’s interesting that without recognizing it - I followed the pathway that I had representation with. Emily: That makes sense. Being a teacher is historically female. So your teachers also saw teachers as being female when they were little girls, and so on and so on. Chimamanda talks about biological differences between CIS gender men and CIS gender women, but at the same time, the way we conceive of gender right now really exaggerates those differences. So women are nurturers - so they’re teachers and nurses. And men are the leaders and strong. It’s so clear when we look at this research that we’re still living in a world that is very controlled by those historical conceptions of gender. Mady: Ya - I actually have some percentages here for the number of women in certain roles: Traditional Career
It’s super obvious that there is still a huge difference in the types of careers men are pursuing vs women. Emily: The limitations are so clear. Mady: Yes. I think it speaks volumes to the power of having role models and seeing women pursuing a career you never thought about. Emily: Representation is so important. When we look at our own lives and the way we’ve been impacted by a lack of or an abundance of representation - we can understand how it affects others as well. Mady: When you think about marginalized communities it’s a double whammy. Whether it’s disabled women or women of color there are even fewer opportunities for representation. Emily: Ya of course. Mady: Chimamanda’s experience paying her car attendant showed her skeptical friend Louis that there still is a disparity between men and women. “These are little things, but sometimes it is the little things that hurt the most.” What kinds of everyday experiences have you had where this disparity was made obvious either to you or someone you were with? What did you do? Emily: What I first think of when I hear that question is the pervasiveness and the violence of the male gaze and things like cat calling and situations where women are made to feel sexually objectified. It’s still such a fear and it’s so unfair. When I was a young teenager I didn’t understand why getting cat called or getting stared up and down by a man made me feel so small and scared. I think it takes so long to understand why, but we can feel it. That’s how a lot of this starts for me. I feel it a lot in the classroom, and I have to step out of the situation to figure out what’s going on. Chimamanda talks about this in the book, as a young woman in the classroom it can be hard to get respect and feel like you’re holding the type of space that you plan to and want to get your point across and help your students learn and get where you want them to because you’re getting sexually objectified or not getting taken seriously. I feel it the most in the classroom because teaching in the college setting is historically a male dominated field. SO it still can feel new or hard for people to understand that their english teacher is a woman or maybe younger than them. It can be hard for people not to bring some unconscious bias into the room. Mady: Chimamanda’s example is so obviously sexist, but what gets difficult is like for example in your experiences with teaching - it can be really hard to describe and pinpoint the kinds of things that are happening that you let you know it’s not right. It’s nice to talk about these things with others who have experienced this and get some validation, but if it’s something really subtle or something like the male gaze. It’s difficult to describe that to someone who doesn’t understand that sexism is happening. Emily: Not everyone is receptive to this type of idea, but I’ve come to understand that unless a space is decidedly anti-racist, anti-sexist, and homophobic, by default it is sexist, racist, and homophobic. That’s just how our world is set up. In a classroom, grocery store, your family’s home, everything is part of this larger culture and when we go into these spaces we often-time assume that we’re safe. But often times we’re not because there is this default-ness to some of the inequalities going on. Mady: Wow I think that’s true. Unless you’re in a community that is consciously and actively aware of those biases it’s very true that it won’t necessarily be a safe environment even if you expect it. Wow. Emily: Ya Mady: Chimamanda talks about female Americans caring strongly about being “liked.” “Being likable” does not include showing anger or being aggressive or disagreeing too loudly.” Do you agree? Why do you think this is? Realistically, how valuable is it to be liked? Is this the same for men and women? If you’re not American, do you notice this in your own culture? Emily: For sure. Being liked and likeable is something I’m still consciously working so hard to try to unlearn. I was raised by a people pleaser in my mom, and I don’t know where she learned that, but it’s definitely so hard. Whenever Chimamanda talks about it I just cringe because I fall into that category so strongly. Mady: It’s interesting to hear her perspective that it’s an American trait. I wonder why that is? Emily: I’m sure it’s connected to putting marriage first. If you’re likeable as a woman it feels like a protection because our society values marriage so much. If you’re likeable and can find yourself a man and get married it feels like it’ll all be okay. I don’t know if it’s tied to that, but I feel like the way we talk to little girls and tell them to cross their legs and be polite and appear respectable it feels like there has to be a through-line to something like marriage or having a respectable job and getting taken care of. If you’re not likeable you have less protection. Especially if you’re a minority and you’re getting discriminated against by the hegemonic culture, being likeable is a protection from those dangers. Mady: I think that’s so true. And with traditional roles that women have as caregiver and nurturer, if you’re in those roles you are a super likeable person. You can’t be a good caregiver and be simultaneously angry. Emily: All those roles are about putting others before yourself. And that’s the drug of people pleasing. Even if you’re not happy, you’ve made other people happy. And if you’re a deep people pleaser that’s very sustaining. It’s hard - I should probably take a class on how to unravel and unlearn likability. Once it’s part of your character, it’s a habit to people please and cause the least amount of stir and make yourself as small as possible. We know that that’s a problem. Mady: I think about situations that I’ve been in - most of my social interactions really - when I’m asked to do something and I automatically say “okay” before I even process what they’ve asked me to do. If I continue to people please it’ll reduce the amount of conflict I have and the more people will like me. Is there anything you’ve done that has helped with this? Emily: Where I’m at right now is just trying to reckon with it and asked questions about it. When you walk away from an interaction when you were there to please, ask yourself - “How can I look at what happened and reckon with how what I did was internalized sexism.” I’m way worse around men than women. Mady: Interesting. Emily: All my coaches growing up were men. I always wanted to make sure I didn’t disappoint my dad, and I put a high importance on impressing the men in my life. I felt like I would be safe if I did that and it would be important. So I’m trying to break it out and make sense of it so that I can hopefully move through it one day. Mady: If women are the ones who care more about being liked than men, then they are also going to be the predominant people pleasers, and as a result they probably offer a lot more praise and compliments than men do. So it would be harder to receive praise from them - which would make it more desirable. Emily: That makes sense. Most of my bosses have been men too, so the people in the positions that we feel we need to please are so often men. So it’s a negative feedback loop where it keeps perpetuating. Mady: That’s so interesting. Emily: Is there anything that you’re doing? Mady: Something that has been hard for me is that I don’t fix it in the moment, and then I go home and I vent about it to my husband. Then I feel better because I recognize the problem, but I don’t actually fix it. That was a problem I was stuck in for a long time until I realized I could actually do something about it. It genuinely didn’t seem like something I could address - it just was how it is. And I didn’t think it was my fault, it was the fault of the people taking advantage of me. But I’m realizing that I can take control of the narrative, and I don’t have to always be that person, but it’s a whole process of unlearning. There is so much muscle memory that has to be changed when you’re automatic response is -”Ya, for sure” or “Of course” or “Yeah, and what else can I do?” Emily: That’s such a good point. So much of our interactions are muscle memory. We are always trying to save as much energy as possible, and we don’t use all of our brain power and we take shortcuts and make patterns. And the thing that we don’t want to do is shame ourselves about it because that keeps us from feeling like we can take control of the narrative and rewrite those patterns. Mady: It seems like the only conclusion we can draw from this is that, if we want to fix this, we have to change our muscle memory, which is only going to come by responding differently. And that’s not easy - but the more we do it the more it’ll change our muscle memory and our responses. And because being likeable is so ingrained in our personalities, I think this shift would make such a huge impact in all of our relationships - professionally, socially - than I think we could recognize before hand. Emily: Giving up being likeable is giving up some privilege - the access to be liked. If we stand up for ourselves when we would have been passive is a very vulnerable position. We don’t know what will happen. But it is a very feminist thing to do because it creates a precedence of not laying down in your own life, you're standing up for yourself and others. Mady: That makes it so much more motivating for me to fix this and get ahold of this! Because it doesn’t just affect me. Emily: Chimamanda says that in order to have a fairer, happier world, gender needs to matter less. And for this to happen, we need to raise our sons and daughters differently. What does this look like? What resources or parenting strategies have you seen being used to achieve this purpose? Mady: I’m not a parent - so I haven’t had that experience - but as an elementary school teacher I do get to see this. I think we are making advances in how we talk to young girls. We give them aspirations like “you can be an astronaut, or doctor, or the president,” which we didn’t previously do. But one thing I see so much is how we talk to young girls about our own bodies and their bodies. That has got to change. If you think about how big an issue body image is, and it’s so easy to wonder how this will ever change because it is so pervasive - I think we can change this by changing the way we talk to the rising generations. How many little girls grow up thinking it’s normal to be on a diet because mom is on a diet? Hear their moms talk about their own body with hate? Seeing their mom get fat shamed by their dad? Getting shamed for how much they eat? I had another student in 2nd grade who always says that mommy is going on runs to get skinny so I go with her so I can get skinny too. This has got to change. If we continue to keep talking to young girls this way that’s only going to get worse. Emily: This is a good example of how this happens generationally and how we continue not to be as empowered as we could be. When you talk about the way we talk about our bodies it is also about sexuality. I was listening to a TED talk about how little boys are allowed to name their genitalia, but little girls are told to keep their covered up and they don’t even learn the names necessarily. There is a lot of shame about our bodies in general and our sexuality. And it starts at such a young age and we carry that into adulthood. Mady:That makes total sense. Emily: And it’s such a painful one. Bodies are so personal and I know that parents just do the best that they can, but it’s hard. But these conversations need to change. Mady: I don’t think there has been a huge difference in the way that boys are being raised- which needs to change if we want to see if a shift. Chimamanda talks about gender needing to matter less, well that’s not going to happen if we only focus on women. The topic of gender also includes men. I found a cool article in the NY Times that gives a list of things you can do to help raise your sons differently. The things it mentioned are: -Let him cry. While I wouldn’t say girls are encouraged to cry, they’re allowed to cry. It’s normal. And when they do cry they are responded to with love and comfort and affirmation. But when boys cry, at a certain age they’re not comforted - they’re chastised. -Give boys role models that are male and female. Girls might have male role models due to a lack of representation, but I’ve never met a boy with a female role model. -Teach boys to take care of themselves and others, and take part in housework - if boys don’t know how to take care of themselves it will fall onto others, and usually that means women. -Encourage boys to have friends that are girls. -Teach boys never to use girl as an insult. Mady: I think those are really good. Emily: I like the ones about not gendering human behaviors - crying, sweeping, household chores - these are normal, human, non-gendered acts that we have gendered. Mady: I think the crying one is much more detrimental than people recognize. And it’s hard for people to talk about because it is so ingrained in how we perceive masculinity and femininity. It’s hard to say “men’s ability to process emotions has been hindered by society’s response to them crying.” “Men don’t have safe outlets for their emotions.” I think that is a hard conversation. Emily: When we look at how early we ascribe gender norms to humans - I always cringe at gender reveal parties - which are a very normalized thing in our culture - because I know that it is normalized. If you’re having a boy it means you’ll be teaching them x y and z things. And if you’re having a girl you’re going to teach them these things. And it makes it easier because you can prepare yourself because of how we think about gender. So I think there are really big things that need to be unlearned. Mady: Even just the way we decorate nurseries. It’s an indicator of what jobs are okay for boys and not girls. How many girls have you seen playing with tractors or boys playing with dolls? Emily: When you meet a young child - like 3 or 4 - who isn’t socialized enough to live in a specific gender, and you can just feel the freedom in that and it is so rare and striking and beautiful. So when you see a boy playing with a doll or crying or talking about things that usually you would associate with a young girl it gives me a lot of hope. Mady: These conversations can’t happen unless parents see the value in them. Mady: “We stifle the humanity of boys. We define masculinity in a very narrow way. .. We teach boys to be afraid of fear, of weakness, of vulnerability.” She then goes on to say that this leaves men with very fragile egos, and women are then taught to cater to this ego. To always let the man be more successful. Do you agree with this? How can we address this topic without making men feel “emasculated?” Emily: I do. I think it’s another one of those things that feels so ingrained. I have seen generations of women do this - so it is something I catch my self doing almost second nature. It’s not a nature thing - it’s a learned behavior, but it comes so naturally. Mady: I almost didn’t include this question because I could see it being so offensive - and I think that’s the point. I think it can be offensive to men and women - and for the women getting offended if could be a result of continuing to cater to men and their egos. Emily: So how do we break out of this? I think it has to be a conversation that you’re able to have in your relationships. Not even romantic relationships - I could have this with my dad or my brother. Mady: Agreed. I think it’s a tough conversation, and this question feels like an accusation, but if you look at what Chimamanda says, it’s very well put. It’s on page 26-27. She says, “We do a great disservice to boys in how we raise them. We stifle the humanity of boys. We define masculinity in a very narrow way. Masculinity is a hard, small cage, and we put boys inside this cage. We teach boys to be afraid of fear, or weakness, of vulnerability. We teach them to mask their true selves, because they have to be, in Nigerian-speak, a hard man.” Then it talks about boys and men being the one to have to pay the bills which instills the idea of men being the bread-winner and provider. So if anyone wanted to have this conversation, I think this book is a great resource. Because Chimamanda talks about it as a disservice to both men and women by perpetuating this role of masculinity. Emily: I love the idea of introducing texts into conversations and relationships. I know it seems like a boring thing to do.. But it’s such a powerful tool because we don’t always have the languages or experiences. So bringing in someone else’s languages and experiences can give help add new vocabulary and understanding. Mady: After I read this the first time I didn’t have the tools to describe how powerful it was, so I had my husband read it so that we could talk about it. So I agree with that. Ok next question- In Nigeria, being married is an expectation that women are supposed to aspire to. Married women receive more respect. We’ve already touched on this a bit - but why do you think married women sometimes receive more respect? Emily: In our culture we marry for love - and this historically is the first few generations where the institution of marriage was establishing social status or privilege. There is also a huge focus on reproducing. I don’t think we’ve completely gotten over that - and I think we like to think that we have. But if we dig deep down into it - even for example if I’m walking alone vs with my partner, and the kinds of reactions we get. It upholds this idea of the American Dream, and I think older couples can get very upset about this. And when they are referring to the upcoming generation getting married later and later, I think there is an element of anger and fear towards getting married later and less, and having less children, and how this will change the way our culture works and how we establish social status. Mady: I think if you just look at an average conversation with a woman in her late 30s and she’s unmarried, if she bumps into someone she hasn’t seen in a while, they’re most likely going to bring up her marital status. This question really seems like it’s aimed at people in other cultures like Nigeria or somewhere more traditional, but if you look at our everyday interactions - like how you’re treated when you’re with your partner verses alone, this is very obviously still pervasive in our culture. Emily: When someone gets engaged or married, there is a huge reception that you see pictures of on all the socials, and it gets so much engagement. Even if you don’t know the people well, when you see the pictures or the events, it has some kind of currency to us and it means something to us and we get excited over it. But then when you look at other posts about jobs, promotions, career changes, grad school acceptance, personal and career goals - that is met with much less excitement and reception. These posts almost feel like bragging, and you feel a sense of obligation and a need to apologize to this un-humble act you just committed. But I don’t think I would feel the same way if I posted engagement photos. Mady: That’s so interesting. It’s almost more of a right of passage than something like getting into grad school. Emily: Why do you think women are aspired to marriage? Mady: Like we’ve said I think it’s very cultural, I think that reproduction is a big factor considering that women play a big part in that. I just read an interesting study about the situation of women in Cambodia which has been a war torn country and there are a lot of women’s rights issues. And it talked about Female Head of Households being the poorest community. It talked about how this is especially pervasive in rural and agricultural areas. And this study mentioned that the average plot of land for someone who makes a living from agriculture is 100 acres, and the average FHH plot of land is 5 acres. Which isn’t enough to support a family. And there are predators who come and steal land from FHH’s, and because women don’t have the same access to access to legal support as men, they fall prey to this kind of event because of the lack of opportunities they have. Even though this is a very specific example of women in Cambodia, when you look at families here - it is so much harder for women who have kids and are single. So I think women are encouraged to aspired to marriage, according to cultural biases, they need a man present to have access to that privilege. Emily: I think this happens unconsciously. If parents encourage their daughter to get married, they might think they just want them to be happy and find love, but it is also tied to opportunities and tying them to male privilege. It’s super real. I love that example in Cambodia. It bears so much weight. Mady: You messaged me the idea a few weeks ago about this idea that you just wanted to chat about, and it is the fact that you and I are both white hetero women, and as a result we have access to white male privilege through our relationships with our partners who are both white. I think it brings up an interesting topic. All of the examples we’ve been talking about have been women who are encouraged to or aspiring to marriage with men. But there are plenty of women who are aspiring to marry a woman or perhaps not even marry at all. Emily: That brings up such a good point. These things are so complicated because it involves your preferences as well as your sexuality and lifestyle. It’s deeply personal but also political. Who you are with has a bearing on how you move through the world. It’s one of those feminist considerations that I haven’t been able to forget about ever since I read about it. Mady: I think considering that we’re already white women, and then we’re with white men, we have that extra privilege, and it’s interesting to think how many people are excluded from that privilege. Emily: Another thing that Chimamanda talks about is with compromise in relationships. She says, “We teach females that in relationships compromise is what a woman is more likely to do.” Have you seen this in your own life? What kinds of compromises have you seen women make for their marriage? Mady: For sure. I can speak from experience on this one. Growing up with a traditional Christian upbringing, it is super normal that men are the bread-winners and women are the stay at home moms. And while there is nothing wrong with that at all, even if you’re not sure that you’ll be a stay at home mom, it is so much easier for you to make those compromises. My husband and I went to school at the same time. We were both full time students working about full time to get through school. I felt a lot of pressure from myself to be my husband’s supporter because he would be the provider - because when we have kids I’m going to be the one that takes time away from work. So I would do the housework, the cooking, the cleaning, and it just happened. It wasn’t something that we discussed or arranged, it just happened. There was absolutely no pressure from my husband, it was just how I felt it should be. I see it perpetuated now, and I know much of this is how I’m choosing to handle this - when my husband is looking at things like further education and things that will advance his career it’s one thing, but then when I consider things that I could do that would further my own career, if it would require a move or more money it is so much harder for me to validate it because I question if it makes sense for me to have a career. It’s tough and it’s something I haven’t really come to terms with yet. Emily: It’s very personal. You said a few times that you’re the one putting the pressure on yourself, but it’s the culture and societal pressure or just that society is telling you that the pressure and blame should fall on you. Mady: It’s hard to differentiate between what I want and what society and culture has told me to aspire to. It’s hard to have the confidence to pursue those things too. It’s tough because I always have the doubt of should I even be the one in our relationship to pursue the career? Emily: I relate to this way of sliding into a role of making compromises and being the one to do the housework - and it feels strange to step back and ask why am I doing this? Is this learned? Or natural? Or is it because I like it? Mady: And how I’m coming to terms with that right now is I’ve taken the opposite approach to it. I’m home all day right now because I have summers off, and Danny will come home from working all day and he’s like, “Seriously? You didn’t do any of the dishes? You didn’t run any of the errands?” And I just don’t want to because I don’t want to be the wife that stays home and does all the housework. Emily: You could spend your whole day with that. Mady: It’s been an interesting journey. I’m still trying to figure it out. Emily: How you decide to organize your relationship does have a deeper meaning. Mady: Exactly. Totally shifting gears, Chimamanda references rape culture by telling the story of a Nigerian university student who was gang raped. “The response of many young Nigerians, both male and female, was something like this: yes, rape is wrong, but what is a girl doing in a room with four boys?” Why do you think “victim blaming” has become so pervasive? Emily: My answer is very influenced by the book Not That Bad by Roxanne Gay. It’s reports from rape culture. It’s a bunch of thinkers, writer, and artists who have come together to talk back about rape culture. Since reading that book, I’ve learned that sexual violence has historically and continues to be a form of warfare. It’s a tool for silencing, destruction, and social control. It’s an entire system that is a part of our culture’s larger structural gender inequality. And when we blame a victim we are able to look at a rape as a singular problem - as something that that person did wrong. It’s like an isolated occurrence that has nothing to do with other forms of sexual violence and historical sexual violence when in reality they are all connected to each other and they’re operating in this larger system that is designed to keep these occurrences separate. When we victim blame as a culture we’re able to keep our masks on and we don’t have to look at what’s going on and reckon with the fact that rape has been a historical tool to uphold dominant culture. Ever since this country has existed, and all over the world really, victim blaming is such a violence because it keeps us from seeing what is really going on. Mady: That is an interesting perspective that I’ve never thought about. Emily: Bodies Without Borders is the essay from that anthology that I really recommend, especially when considering the immigration situation going on and what’s happening at the borders. And sexual violence is used in so many spaces as a form of warfare, and victim blaming is part of that. Mady: I’m really glad you brought up this perspective because I was really grasping at straws trying to understand why this is happening, and I took it a totally different way. Emily: How did you take it? Mady: Well my original response was, “How would it be different if most victims were male?” But then I thought about cultures where sexual violence is the norm. And the study I mentioned earlier about Cambodia said that 25% of victims of domestic abuse don’t realize they’ve experienced domestic abuse, which speaks volumes on the lack of education and how that can effect knowledge of human rights in general, but it also speaks volumes on the influence of the culture. If that is something that is the norm in your culture, it probably wouldn’t register as abuse or as violence. So I was just trying to imagine the first time a woman tried to speak out about being abused by her husband and how people would respond to her speaking out about something that is the norm. So that’s where I took it and how I tried to understand it. Emily: I definitely think that has something to do with it too. These experiences have been silenced for so long, and to bring them up is an offense. How dare you say that about this man or try to take away this man’s power. It’s so fear based. Mady: There is a lot of gas lighting with it to which is very dangerous. Emily: Which brings it back to, how do we raise girls to realize when they are being violated or experiencing a violence, and how do we make the world more accepting of them speaking up. Mady: In the last few years there has been huge progress, but it is still such a problem and I hope everyone can recognize that just because SOME people have come out and recognized public figures who have been sexually abusive, that doesn’t mean everybody can. It’s not a safe environment. And when you think about women who have been able to do this - ya, they drew attention to their issue but that doesn’t mean they came out on top. It’s still so toxic. Emily: So true. When you look at the #metoo movement and who gets the privilege to be heard and whose voices get amplified verses whose voices don’t get heard, it’s troubling. We have to look at the progress, but we also have to look at how far there is to go. Mady: This next question is once again totally shifting gears. Chimamanda says, “The problem with gender is that it prescribes how we should be rather than recognizing how we are.Imagine how much happier we would be, how much freer to be our true individual selves, if we didn’t have the weight of gender expectations.” How would your life be different (for better or for worse) without gender expectations? What aspects of your life would be different? Emily: This is such a hard question. I’ll try not to just turn it right back on you, but it’s so hard to see what would be different. You don’t know what you don’t know. I have a lot of shame about my body that I don’t think I would have - ie armpit hair - I would never feel shame about that if I wasn’t socialized as a woman. So small things like that. How about you? Mady: It’s very hard with the Christian background that I had, I knew what my life was going to look like. There is a lot of comfort with that, but you also don’t have to push yourself. And that’s why I have so much anxiety and hesitation over pushing myself because I had a path set for me my whole life that I’ve been on. And it’s hard to know how life would be without that. And it’s funny because when I first talked to my little brother about feminism, he responded to me by telling me about a time when a girl tried to mug him. And how if she had been male he would have been okay defending himself however he saw fit, but because it was a girl he felt like he had to be really polite, and he handled it much differently. So his mindset was very much -ok yes, feminism and sexism are real - BUT women also get treated better and get off the hook for things just because they’re girls. Which was an interesting way to thing about this question too. Emily: I think when we think about women getting off the hook for things like this - there is so much underlying sexism. Maybe that’s the point of this question - gender does provide a clear and comfortable path, but we’ll never know the freedom of how we would be different without gender expectations. Mady: This reminds me of an interesting conversation I had with Danny one time and this scenario of, if your mom is a professional pianist, when you’re little you’re most likely going to be thrown into the world of music more so than someone whose family is not in music. So when you look at how we’re taught to be through our gender using this lense - it’s not necessarily a bad thing if you’re raised as a pianist if you’re passionate about it. It’s tricky though, there are extremes. Maybe you feel like you have to be a pianist because you don’t want to let your mom down, there is a lot of pressure, or maybe you expressed not wanting to play piano and that was also fine. So there is a balance where it’s tough to be a free thinker about what you could be doing and what could be different when you’ve not been taught to be a free thinker in terms of what you can do in terms of your gender. Emily: There is no way to know if a 3 or 4 year old is feeling at home in their body in terms of the gender norms they’re being socialized into. Or whether they are coming up on something that feels scary and unfamiliar and strange which contributes to anxiety over how they’re supposed to be. And there’s no way to really know that at such a young age and it gets blurrier and blurrier as you grow up. Mady: Right, and if those traditional gender norms are assumed for a child and they’re comfortable for that child, and the child is still raised to be a free thinker… is that a bad thing if? It’s confusing for me to thing about that. Emily: And who gets left behind in that part of it? If we think about it that way, I have this idea that all forms of social control are negative and we need to break them down. But at the same time there must be a level of social norms that are necessary to keep our society running smoothly. But who gets hurt and who gets left behind in that drive to be smooth. And the people who get hurt are the people who historically have been hurt, the people who aren’t at home in the gender they’ve been socialized into. It’s endlessly fraught I think. Mady: Gosh, this is really hard to wrap my mind around. Part of that is because we’re all subject to it. It’s almost scary to raise a child without any gender norms for me. What would that look like? Emily: There is a study done about kids who were raised like this without any socialized gender norms. Kind of an ethnographic study of kids growing up. Mady: This isn’t something I know much about so I’ll have to look at that. Emily: It’s so easy for me to spin out on gender. Chimamanda says that things like being good at house-hold chores are not gender specific; rather, women are just raised doing them. Do you think there are any skills/ qualities that are gender specific? What skills/ qualities does your culture make gender specific? Mady: It’s hard to know if there are qualities that are gender specific. I’ve heard arguments for and against this. It’s hard to know. But biologically, the fact that we have the capacity to be mothers carries this stereotype of being able to be the comforter. I’m sure you could make the argument that it is in our genes as a result in terms of raising children, but I also think some of that is societal norms that are pushed. Emily: I don’t know enough about the biology side of things, but it seems like that must be true. In some women there is something that is like a nurturing gene. Mady: I don’t know how much of that has to do with changes that happen while actually developing a baby inside of you versus an innate gene. Emily: Ya growing up my sister and I from a very young age always liked to play school and house. I think a lot of women can relate to that. Were we already socialized at that young age? Of course we were to some extent - or was there something innate that wanted us to be caretakers? Our barbies had families - I didn’t have any independent women barbies. Was that because family is innate? Or because I hadn’t seen it? Mady: Or the pictures on the barbie box? Emily: Or the movies, and disney? Mady: Ya, nature vs. nurture. Emily: So, related to this, What if, in raising children, we focus on ability instead of gender? What if we focus on interest instead of gender? What are things that your culture pushes on children from a small age that are gender specific rather than interest specific? Mady: When I was looking into male dominated career, the blue collar jobs are almost entirely male. So I guess going back to the career question I do think we are predisposed based off of upbringing and society to pursue different careers. But as far as interests go - I spent a year of high school living in Denmark, and they have an interesting way to do this. Starting in primary school they pick a track of something they are interested in and good at - like math, science, language - and they can switch if they want, but by the time they get to high school they have a path and when they get to college they know what to study, or they know that they maybe don’t even need to go to college because they’ll pursue a vocational school. And I think that’s what could happen if we cater to interests and abilities. And that’s not to say that those kids’ interests aren’t influenced by gender norms, either, though. Emily: If your career path isn’t connected by your interests, in the US, it can be very confusing knowing how to survive in capitalism. So it’s exciting to think about the opportunities that come up when you look at it from the reverse side and look at your interests first, and what kinds of careers come up instead of looking at how your interests limit you. Mady: It’s a cool way to discover your interests before college. So Chimamanda mentions that she is “trying to unlearn many lessons of gender [she] internalized while growing up.” What gender lessons have (or should) you or others unlearn? Emily: Yes. We talked about the people pleasing thing which is on my unlearning list. But the things I’m trying to unlearn are always linked to body image, bodies, and beauty. Naomi Wolf’s “The Beauty Myth” was really helpful for me here. Just thinking about the way that beauty is a construct related to gender norms and gender inequality. It can be really hard to unlearn those types of things because they’re so internalized. There are clear ways to get started. Christy Harrison talks about this in her Podcast Food Psyche. If you make the images you see more diverse, you can think of beauty in a more diverse way. So for me, following different accounts and staying away from the conventionally attractive body image, body focus, fitness focus accounts that push forward these beauty standards - and more accounts that push back against beauty standards or ask questions about it or put forth a new type of beauty or steer away from beauty all together and establish a politic of ugly. What does it mean to totally disregard beauty standards that have been pushed on us. - what does it mean to be ugly, or what does it mean to be beautiful. A lot of my unlearning has to do with all those things and questions. Mady: You’re the one who introduced me to Christy Harrison’s podcast, and I did a very similar thing after listening to her podcast where I cleared out my instagram and didn’t feel bad about unfollowing people (even people I know) - even people I know - who are constantly posting those body pictures that made me feel bad, and just following more diverse pages - whether they have to do with bodies or not and just being more aware has made a huge difference in how I view my body. It sounds so simple, but it has had a profound effect on not only my own body but also I’ve stopped comparing so much, and it’s helped me be more aware of body image issues and marginalized bodies - whether they’re disabled, or plus size, or POC. It’s been eye opening. Emily: Once you notice it you can’t un-notice it. It’s like turning on a light. Especially for someone with white privilege and thin privilege and being sheltered from injustice in a lot of ways and being able to turn that light on and make myself more aware of my privileges and the way that those privileges take away from other people and how do I push back against that. Mady: I’ve learned so much these last few months following these pages and learning about the lives of disabled people, lgbtq people, and learning about them and recognizing how little I know about the suffering and the marginalization and lack of privilege and resource that so many people go through that I was totally blind to. Emily: And by design. People want us to be blind to it. It can be a hard experience - this learning process, because if I have a reaction to something like - ooh that’s not attractive, it’s an opportunity, I get to break it down and ask why I don’t think it’s attractive and have a better understanding of myself. It’s normal and it’s going to happen, but how can I make it an opportunity to learn more. Mady: I love that so much. Emily: In what ways are you unapologetically feminine? (Or - if you’re male - masculine?) Mady: Man, that is a hard question to answer now that we’ve totally questioned how much of femininity is a social construct. The examples Chimamanda gives in the book are very stereotypically feminine - wearing high heels, make up, dressing up. And I have this memory of my first day in 6th grade, which was the first year of middle school, which was when people started to be interested in boys and girls - so I was filling out a get to know you sheet that would be put around the classroom, and in my head I was only thinking about things that I though boys that would want to see. Things that were traditionally feminine - because I thought that’s what would have been attractive and gotten me attention. One of the things I put was “accessorizing.” What does that even mean?! I was 11! So it’s hard to know in what ways I am unapologetically feminine versus, what is going to get me positive attention. Emily: I think it’s helpful to think about masculine and feminine energy. Not everyone believes in this and I don’t know too much about it, but people believe that everyone has both. The feminie energy is warm and flexible and open, and the masculine energy is a bit more aggressive. It’s traditional in those understandings, but what is un-traditional is the idea that we all have both and we can tap into both. Mady: That is interesting. This probably isn’t quite how you were thinking about this - but when I’m with my brothers my humor is very different - it’s much more potty humor - which is probably less of a masculine energy thing and more of a social construct of masculinity. But the feminine things that I do feel strongly about - like romance for example - I do want to have a guy that is supportive and romantic - all the chick flick ideals, I identify with that. And wanting to be the little spoon. Emily: Ya I like and want to be vulnerable and emotional, and I think that’s a feminine quality. Mady: I think it’s even a feminine privilege. Emily: Do you agree with Chimamanda’s justification of the word feminist? Mady: I’m going to just read her justification, because I like it: “Gender is not an easy conversation to have. It makes people uncomfortable, sometimes even irritable. Both men and women are resistant to talk about gender, or are quick to dismiss the problems of gender. Because thinking of changing the status quo is always uncomfortable. Some people ask, ‘why the word feminist? Why not just say you are a believer in human rights, or something like that?’ because that would be dishonest. Feminism is, of course, part of human rights in general - but to choose to use the vague expression human rights is to deny the specific and particular problem of gender. It would be a way of pretending that it was not women who have, for centuries, been excluded. It would be a way of denying that the problem of gender targets women. That the problem was not about being human, but specifically about being a female human. For centuries, the world divided human beings into two groups and then proceeded to exclude and oppress one group. It is only fair that the solution to the problem should acknowledge that.” She is so eloquent, and she says that so well. I just think that if you want to fix a problem you have to address it head on and specifically. Emily: We can’t fight a system that silences with more silence around it. Mady: Like Chimamanda’s friend Louis, many people today think that gender inequality is a thing of the past. What kinds of things can you say to them to have a discussion about it rather than an argument? Emily: This is a great question because so often when you try to have a discussion it becomes an argument. And a painful argument. It’s an argument where you can get so hurt so quickly because it is political, but it is also personal. It’s deeply personal because we’ve had these experiences. I think taking a cue from Chimamanda and sharing your personal experiences and the experiences of others - like people who don’t have the same privileges as you or just have different experiences, and coming from a place of concrete examples instead of using abstract language. There is nothing wrong with conversations with abstract language when you don’t have the examples and that language to use - but from my own experiences people will find the holes and they’ll attack them Mady: And they’ll twist the ambiguity and then you’re on the defense which wasn’t what you wanted to do. It’s tricky, but I think one of the only ways to get around it is to find more opportunities to prepare for and practice those conversations. Maybe that just means being well versed in women’s rights. You can learn through conversations, but if you’re new to it, you probably don’t want to go into a conversation about women’s rights guns ablazing, because if someone in that conversation knows more than you do about your topic, you’ll get shut down. Emily: There are so many great things to read. The pool is endless. And I don’t just mean books - but taking in information through podcasts, instagram, and there are so many things available for us to dive into others experiences to enrich the way we think. Mady: Ya! Emily: Chimamanda said that her great-grandmother wouldn’t have known the word feminist, but that doesn’t mean we wasn’t one. What stories do you have of your ancestors who were feminists? Mady: This warranted a really fun conversation with my mom and grandma about feminists in my family history. And what I mostly found were loads of women who were fiercely protective of their families and would make outrageous sacrifices to ensure the survival and well being of their family members when they were put in extreme situations. But another story that stuck out to me, I think 4 generations back, my grandma was a mail-order bride from Austria. She came to the states around 1898 - and she ended up divorcing her husband because of how he treated her - and that just did not happen in that time period, and on top of it all she was an immigrant who was learning English. As the legacy goes, she ended up working in bars and doing what she could to survive, and she sewed in her petticoat a safe place for a gun for whatever she might need it for. And I just think she’s so cool. Emily: I love that story. And I think it ties back to everything we’ve talked about with privilege. She gave up her social status and privilege through her marriage. Mady: It’s impressive that she had the wherewithal to do this, too. Emily: I love the idea of looking through our family history to see these stories. Mady: Do you have any of these kinds of stories? Emily: I don’t really know. I used to think about if there were artists or writers in my family, and I thought I was the first. But I just don’t think that’s true. 1- I’m sure there were women with writerly or feminist impulses that would have been repressed for sure in my family, and 2- when I look at the stories I know, they’re told from male perspectives. Interestingly enough, my paternal grandma is our genealogist, but from what I know, she’s most invested in her husband’s family. So I don’t even really know her history. I think about the stories I’ve heard, and who gets to tell the stories, and it all feels very male-centric. I’m sure there were amazing women, I just don’t know the stories. Which is sad - but also just a fact of the patriarchy. Mady: That’s a really good point. I’m sure there are countless examples in everyone’s family history of strong women that just didn’t get documented. This is the last question of our awesome discussion: “My own definition is a feminist is a man or a woman who says, yes, there’s a problem with gender as it is today and we must fix it, we must do better.” Everyone has a little different definition of feminism. What’s yours?” Emily: I’m prepared for this question! I think the way I first learned feminism was from a theoretical framework but now I’m thinking about it as more of a practical opportunity for freedom and inclusivity and justice and progress. It’s more than a theory, it’s a practice, which for me has started with looking at my own life and asking a lot of questions and reckoning with my complicity in gender inequality and racism and homophobia that I want to fight against. I’ve had to look internally first. For me that’s the first step of feminism, especially if you’re a person of relative privilege. Feminism is so broad and you can focus everything through a feminism lens which is really practical. For me nothing gets better without feminism. Everything has to be there. Mady: I like how you make it so widespread - because that’s what intersectional feminism is. It’s not just about white cis women. So I like that definition, and I like the inclusivity aspect of that a lot. Emily: What is yours? Mady: My definition of feminism is the freedom for men and women to be able to choose how to live their life. I like looking at it from this perspective that Chimamanda gives because there are probably lots of people who feel they have this freedom, but due to social conditioning and what they've been presented with, their freedom might not come from their own free thinking - rather a designated thought process and gender norms. Emily: Freedom isn’t necessarily it’s a destination. It has a lot of layers. We can be made more free. And feminism is a way toward greater freedom. Mady: If we have the representation that we need, it just expands that even more and we have more ideas of what we can choose with that freedom. Emily: It allows us to be limitless with the possibilities of our lives. Mady: Man - I could keep going with this conversation all day. Emily: I know - it’s the best! Mady: This has been so good! I’ve enjoyed this so much. Thank you so much for joining us today!!! If anyone wants to get in touch with Emily she’ll be available on the Facebook community Thanks again Em. This has been so fun. Emily: I’ve learned so much through this conversation which underlines the importance of these conversations, so I think it’s very cool that you’re making this space. Mady: Thanks, I think talking about things is one of the best ways to learn about it. Listening to you and having to come up with responses has been really helpful for me too!
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