Yes. This. (Re: Jian Ghomeshi's Charges and Trial)

I don't often write a blog post that's basically just a link to someone else's blog. In fact I don't think I've ever done this before.

However, this blog post captured so perfectly feelings that I haven't been able to articulate about the charges against and trial of Jian Ghomeshi that I decided to share a link to this blog post here.

If you are a someone who has been upset by Jian Ghomeshi's (yes, yes, alleged) actions and/or our society's response thereto, or if you are someone who wants to understand why many people are upset by this, please read this blog post.

Here's an excerpt to give you an idea of where this (eloquent and pithy) blog post will take you:

"The woman, discredited witness #1, wrote him flirty emails a year later, attaching a shot of her in a red bikini. Does that mean Jian Ghomeshi didn’t assault her?… Nope. It means we live in a society where women are so devalued that the deeply engrained desire for male approval supersedes our own intuition constantly. We don’t even know how to recognize our intuition, let alone respect and heed it, because we grow up speaking less, being listened to less and being recognized as complex and intelligent, worthwhile individuals much less."
~Bone broth and breastmilk blog

(Alert: adult language) Link to full blog post: https://bonebrothandbreastmilk.wordpress.com

Sexism #5: Entitlement

I haven't added to my series on sexism in several months. It's not that I haven't been thinking about it, but there have been other things going on – summer, markets, festival, moving, house-sitting.


In some ways, I lead a life that is relatively sheltered from sexism: I don't consume a lot of advertising, many of my friends and neighbours are not sexist. But I still have encounters with sexist behaviour that are too frequent for my liking. This behaviour takes the form of jokes (about feminists or fat girls or sexy girls), discussions of who's hot and who's not, obsessions with weight loss, weight gain and relationships and occasional, casual, conversational references to women as floozies or sluts. (Yes, I live in rural Nova Scotia, and yes, it does still feel like 1956 here some of the time).

Some of this behaviour is engaged in by men I know, and some by women I know. And some of it is engaged in by me. I have my own internalized sexism, my own set of beliefs that I am trying to work with all the time, to revise and rethink and transform.

I try very hard to remember that sexism is bad behaviour and that people who indulge in it are not bad people. We are all products of our culture.

That doesn't mean it's not still frustrating and hurtful to encounter unexamined and unapologetic sexist behaviour. As I discussed in my post about sexism and protagonism back in April, there are some people who do not not seem to understand that people can be protagonists in their own lives even if those people are not men (or not white, or are living with a disability, mental illness, etc., etc.)

It's pretty easy to spot those people. When I'm having a conversation with another person, it's  clear to me when I'm being treated as an equal human being and when I'm being treated as an objectified "woman", an entity that is being assessed for its potential usefulness to the other person, a person who assumes they are the only protagonist in the conversation.

And that assumption about who counts and who does not, is closely related with today's topic: entitlement.

We're entitled to tell you who you are and what you want

Here's a recent example from my own life of being subjected to someone else's sense of entitlement.

Some friends who have headed out west for the winter hosted a farewell-for-now music show a couple of weeks ago at our local community hall. They invited a number of people, including me, to join them on stage to sing or play a song or two.

I was introduced along the lines of "Our friend, the lovely and talented Alex Hickey" or something like that. And as I got up on stage, I heard a male voice heckle from the audience, "and she's available."

"That's debatable," was the response that popped out of my mouth.

But what I wish I had had the presence of mind to say, was, "Why do you feel entitled to decide what my relationship status is – or should be – let alone shouting it at me in a room full of people?"

I'm pretty sure I recognized the voice of that heckler and I don't think he has any specific, hostile feelings toward me as a person. I don't think he was trying to be mean. Maybe he was even trying to be helpful, thinking he could help me to hook up with someone.

The problem is that his heckling didn't take me into account. I wasn't a protagonist in that moment; I was an object. A thing. An available thing.

That comment was based on that man's beliefs and ideas, projected onto me. I'm a single woman and a single woman is obviously "available", à la carte, for men to peruse and either accept or reject.

I have to admit that I have felt that way during a large portion of my life. And at various times, I have traded away some important parts of myself in return for feeling loved and/or sanctioned by the hetero-normative, pair-bonded system that dominates our culture.

I don't feel that way right now. I've learned the hard way that the cost of being in a relationship with someone can be much higher than the cost of not being in a relationship with someone. And that the rewards of loving someone else can be much slimmer than the rewards of loving and valuing oneself.

Who's Entitled?

I admit that I was furious for a couple of days after being heckled like that. My inner monologue ran along the lines of How dare he?, railing against his assumptions, sense of entitlement and down-right rudeness, hurling his assumptions at me while I was trying to do my job, for Pete's sake! Oh, I had my outrage worked up into a fine, self-righteous frenzy, I can tell you.

It took me a while to calm down about it.

It took me a while to calm down about it because I felt hurt and vulnerable. I felt humiliated by that comment. It took me right back to high school, back to the smart, geeky, emotionally-wounded girl I was in my teens, who didn't have a boyfriend, who felt rejected – and rejecting – and pretended not to care.

I felt entitled to judge and be angry at people back in those days. It was my survival. And being thrown back into those feelings threw me back into my judgment and outrage.

A humble and gentle heart is an antidote for entitlement

I went to a concert in Halifax last Friday, a benefit for Syrian Refugees that was put on by a number of my friends in the folk music community. There was some awesome, hard-core, traditional folk music, the kind of music I love: Vince Morash, Ann Fearon and James Crouse, Clary Croft and Dan McKinnon. And there was also a theatrical/musical piece about rights and responsibilities, performed by the youth theatre group, Project ARC. It was excellent: moving and fun and sincere and wholehearted.

Their piece held a big message for me – and for everyone – that none of us are entitled to anything, that our varied assignments in terms of class, gender, sexuality, ability, etc. don't make us more or less human than anyone else. The only things we're entitled to are our inalienable human rights – rights that are extended to every human equally, are ours from birth and cannot be taken away. Coupled with those rights, we each have responsibilities; we all make choices and take actions to either hurt and belittle other people or to respect them and treat them as equals. Or to do nothing.

Sometimes the world feels to me like a wilderness of assumptions and needs and compulsions and demands and expectations. I am trying to build a life that is centred in authenticity and peace, but I  often have experiences that pull me from the path – experiences that stir up anger and outrage, frustration and the risk of being totally overwhelmed by the hugeness of the task before me.

And in that place of feeling overwhelmed and vulnerable, it is far too easy for me to resort to feeling entitled to judge others and to hold them in contempt.  

I was very grateful to receive a reminder last Friday night that I am no more entitled to my judgments than anyone else is to theirs. And that the task of living an authentic life is not overwhelmingly large, but simply the same size as I am. No bigger and no smaller.

It is my responsibility to keep a firm grip on my own sense of myself. No matter what forces push me in what directions, it is always my choice: whom I decide to spend time with and how I want to talk and think and behave toward myself and toward other people.

I believe the best road through the wilderness is not broad, straight and paved with outrage and hurt feelings, but is narrow, winding and organic, delicately picked out between trees, using empathy and compassion – toward others and toward ourselves.

Sexism #3: Protagonism

Is that even a word?

Yes, it is.

protagonism:  the state, character, or activity of a protagonist.

What does this have to do with sexism and feminism?

 

Where we ("Western culture") are coming from

One of the fundamental beliefs of any patriarchal culture is that men are protagonists and women are auxiliary. In other words, men have lives and women (if they're lucky) have men who have lives. This used to be far more pronounced in Western culture than it is today. There were powerful stereotypes of women keeping homes for men and providing them with a safe and comfortable base while the men went out into the world and did things. And then came home to women who were there for them.

It sounds like a pretty sweet deal for the men, in my opinion. Granted, I'm sure there are some who would say that it was a sweet deal for the women, too, that women were "taken care of" under this system . 

This way of arranging things paired responsibility with power. Men were responsible for the people in their family/community, therefore, they had the power and called the shots. Women were not responsible and they did not have the power – they did what they were told or expected to do.

 

A Culture in Transition

Surely this is not what it's like anymore, right? I mean, feminism won, didn't it? And we're all equal now?

And yet, these unequal perceptions around who is a protagonist and who is not linger. They are obvious in our media, our politics, in the prevalence of rape and sexual violence and also in the day-to-day exchanges of many average and ordinary intimate relationships.

My personal experience

I'm a woman who grew up in the era of Free to Be... You and Me. This means that while I saw sexism all around me, I was simultaneously being indoctrinated in the belief that I could be anything I wanted to be. That I was "just as good as any man". I was taught to think of myself as a protagonist. I did not go to university to get my M.r.s. as many girls still joked back in 1990 (and perhaps still joke even to this day?). I went to get my B.A., dammit and I did. 

In my life, relationships have come and gone, while my sense of agency has only continued to grow. I was having a conversation with a friend a couple of months ago and she asked me what I wouldn't give up to be in a relationship. I knew the answer right away: my autonomy and my authenticity. If I have to give up either of those things, it's not worth it. I don't mind making compromises, but if someone wants me to adopt a position in which I have less than 50% of the power and responsibility in the relationship or less that 100% of my power and responsibility for myself (my choices, my circumstances, my thoughts, feelings and behaviour) – I'd rather be alone. 

(My friend's delightful answer to the same question was: yoga – which is also in my top 10, for sure).

Seems straightforward, and yet...

On one hand, it seems strange to me that there are people don't appear to believe that every individual is the protagonist of their own life, regardless of their sex (or race, gender, sexuality, age, ability, etc.). I mean, really? Isn't it just obviously true that every person is living a life that is theirs and that is just as valid and meaningful to them as my life is to me and yours is to you? 

But on the other hand, I have experienced the insidiousness of this bias that one's right to be a protagonist is relative to one's position on the hierarchies of our culture. Granted, due to intersectionality, this can be a complicated thing to figure out between race, sex, class, sexuality, etc.

But as a white woman who has had intimate relationships with white men, I have been shocked on several occasions in the past to find myself in an intimate relationship with a man who seemed to feel entitled to tell me what I thought, how I felt or how he wanted me to live my life. In a couple of instances, before I realized what was happening, I experienced some erosion of my sense of autonomy and authenticity.
 
I must admit that until recently, I didn't grasp that this was an outcropping of sexism.  On the outside, those men seemed like they held pretty good feminist/egalitarian ideals. So, I thought it was just a circumstantial thing. Something about them and something about me had combined to result in a blurriness around my autonomy and authenticity. 

What I now realize is that that "something" is actually part of a systemic problem arising from a culture that raises people to believe that men are protagonists and women are – not.  Women are left with the role of accessory (trophy wife), object (hottie, MILF, slut, whore, etc.), help-mate, second-in-command or junior partner (I well remember hurling that last phrase at a long-time lover in the final days of our relationship). 

Women who resist the subordinate role laid out for them are often labelled as bitches, harridans, nags, harpies, ungenerous, selfish, narcissistic, difficult, ball-breakers, control freaks, pains-in-the-tuckus, domineering, and on and on. 

This does not feel right or fair to me.

Can we change this?

I can see that we have already come a long way – and that we have further still to go.

It seems to me that, as a culture and as individuals, we have some work to do to get away from the victimhood and resentment stirred up by the loss of undeserved entitlement. And there is also work to do in clearing the barriers that make it difficult for women to claim their role as protagonists in their own lives.

Fortunately, there are women and men who are interested in trying to change this facet of our culture.

To me, this kind of change feels like it happens in an interrelated spiral between individuals and the culture at large. For every individual who rethinks their position and makes an effort to change the way they behave in the world, the culture changes, while every change in the culture opens up a door for more people to rethink their position and further change the culture. 

This feels hopeful to me because I believe that individual change is always possible. It is a simple (though also demanding) process of self-examination, honesty, decision-making and practice. And while many people will not go out of their way to change an unfair system – especially if it benefits them – some will.

If you are one of these people and you're a man, you can ask yourself: "To what do I feel entitled? And why?" If your entitlement includes having women in your life organize or reorganize their lives around you and your needs, it's time to ask, "Is that fair? Why do I feel entitled to that? Can I change that about myself?" 

If you are one of these people and you're a women, you can ask yourself: "Do I feel like someone else is entitled to tell me how to live, how to think or how to feel?" If so, it's time to ask "Is that fair? Why don't I feel entitled to decide those things for myself? Can I change that about myself?"

 

I think we can spiral this thing up. Let's get to it!

*****

PS: I've recently read a couple of great blog posts on this topic that I would like to share with you.
Your Princess is in another castle

Ben Pobjie's Wonderful World Of Objects: How YOU Doin'?

And on the other side of the issue, this rant about the agony of lost entitlement might clarify things for you if you're not even sure what I'm talking about, or if you don't think this is an issue worthy of a blog post.