Gina Harris's Blog, page 63

Listening to Black women 101

One frustrating thing this year is how many more people are saying to listen to Black women, then don't really do it, or get mad when Black women don't say what they want to hear. 

I hope the long lead-in to why we listen laid groundwork. I am glad that we had the movie break; that post about Deja getting fridged is relevant.

First, let's build some vocabulary. There is a name for the intersection of white supremacy, anti-Blackness, and misogyny; that word is misogynoir. It was coined by Moya Bailey as she encountered the concept while looking at the treatment of women in hip-hop. That is only one venue where misogynoir happens.

Now, I think a good step going forward is to build on this article and deal with some common stereotypes. My notes are not a substitute for reading the article.

https://everydayfeminism.com/2015/08/4-tired-tropes-misogynoir/ 

Obviously one of the big themes in racism is failure to see a person as a unique individual, instead assuming various traits. Kesiena Boom focuses on four tropes, but they are not mutually exclusive. One woman may be perceived in different ways by different people, or at different times.

1. The Sassy Black Woman

Boom has been on the receiving end of this minimization, and that sucks. What it makes me think of most is how often Black women get mocked for something, and then it gets appropriated and is cool once white people use it, but in kind of an ironic way. I would say a good example is Kayla Newman coming up with "on fleek" and not getting credit, but after that happened initially, people did work to give her credit. Newman is growing her brand. 

If the trend is to not credit Black women, we are not doomed to repeat that. It has nonetheless been a huge problem to get Black women credited and paid.

Likewise, people are getting better about crediting Tarana Burke for #metoo, and that kind of leads us to...

2. The Hypersexual Jezebel

Boom gives a few examples of being sexualized by strange men herself. They are disturbing, but there is a good chance that other women of other races have had similar experiences. There are different backgrounds to the sexualization of Asian, Latina, and Native American women, and also some men are so creepy that they can always find a reason to sexualize you. 

However, I remember via online discussions among women about the first time being catcalled or groped, and noticing early on that Black women seemed to have it start younger (by about four years) and often be more invasive, like getting escalating to groping sooner instead of remaining verbal. 

Some of that may be lingering effects of the mindset of slavery, where Black people were viewed as property that could be owned. It is probably also a factor that Black people are not allowed the same length of childhood. At 32, Ryan Lochte could be described as a stupid kid when was arrested, but at 18 Michael Brown was a demon and a monster, and at 17 Kalief Browder could be locked up for 3 years awaiting trial because of a backpack that was not found on him (and may never have existed, based on very sketchy witnesses). Okay, the time in jail did age him, I guess; it did something. 

There is a lot that is gross about this trope, but the irony that kills me is that it was used to justify rape of Black women, while at the same time Black men were portrayed as the sexual predators going after white women. It may be the most hypocritical stereotype. 

Fun fact: One part of Rosa Parks' early activism was interviewing rape victims.

3. The Angry Black Woman

I have witnessed this in an online group run by some very nice white women. They invited a Black woman to also be an admin, because "diversity" and "other viewpoints". The first time she pointed out something was racist, they felt so persecuted and attacked. It never occurred to them that she had a point, or even that she could have been wrong but with no bad intentions; she was an enemy, out to get them, and they were very hurt.

I left the group, but from what I remember, they are nice ladies, for the most part; they just can't deal with the way they have internalized structural racism. As much as the "nice" sounds sarcastic, it isn't if you think about niceness referring to things being calm and untroubled on the surface. That's just no way to bring about any valuable change. That kind of niceness won't do if you want equality.

I mention it because it is really easy to do without intending to. You have to actively root that racism out. 

Also, a fun part of this one is that The Angry Black Women relates directly to...

4. The Strong Black Woman

It sounds complimentary, right? She is strong; she can handle thing! And she is so nurturing too, caring about issues and guiding us, and dispensing wisdom for us.

So this is where it is really easy to exploit Black women, because they know so much and they are so strong that they don't really need support or reimbursement or credit. That is why it is so easy to suddenly view them as angry if they express any displeasure or ask for reimbursement or don't want to listen to your problems or do anything that isn't self-effacing. How dare they?

But also when they try to revel in their glory, they are reduced back to sassy.

And it's a rotten thing to put on anyone, but it's been going on for a while. Zora Neale Hurston called Black women "the mules of the world" in Their Eyes Were Watching God. That was 1937. 

And all of the tropes suck. It sucks to not have your full humanity recognized. 

Let's fix this. Now.

I think I can complete this in one more post.

Side note:

If you are wondering if there is correlation with the Nina Simone song, "Four Women"... yes, though I am not sure if it was intentional. 

Roughly, Sweet Thing could be the Hypersexual Jezebel, Peaches could be the Angry Black Woman, and Aunt Sarah could be the Strong Black Woman. 

Saffronia is not represented here, and perhaps would not be, because the mixed race product of rape would be uncomfortable to deal with; these tropes are supposed to allow for easy definition, without complexity. And yet, Saffronia exists because it was so easy to say they were all Jezebels, but only Sweet Thing got paid for it.

There is no Sassy Black Woman in the song, but TV tropes dates that to the '70s, and the song is from 1966.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SassyBlackWoman

Why we should listen to Black women

I know I have been taking a long time to get to the point with this. 

Part of that is this is not my specialty. For the people who read my work, I am relatively well-informed. In this space, my explaining makes sense, but there is a much larger space available. 

Because of that, this post will link to other sources, and then in a subsequent post we will link to even more.

Wednesday I mentioned that one aspect of privilege was not having to notice various forms of oppression, because they are not directed at you. I closed with the question, "How much do you get to ignore if you are on the receiving end of combined white supremacy, anti-Blackness, and misogyny?"

The answer is not much. That in the simplest sense is why we need to listen to Black women. They learn a great deal while on the receiving end of abuse.

Here is our first article:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/10/13/black-fake-twitter-accounts-for-trump/ 

It is from October 13th, just 6 days ago, about Twitter accounts that claim to be Black people, encouraging other Black people to vote for Trump. You will also find fake accounts encouraging Black people not to vote at all, and then some real people who have been influenced by them. 

The purpose of them may very well be to suppress the Black vote, though there are plenty of other attempts to do that via voter intimidation and voter roll purges and reduction of polling places and ballot boxes in Black areas. What I really notice is that a lot of white people love retweeting these, because it helps them feel like their support for Trump is not racist. 

I mention it for this post because this is an old tactic, but it is a tactic that has been used by Russia, it influenced the last election and is being used again for this election - I hope not successfully - and if we had listened to Black women - especially Shafiqah Hudson and I'Nasah Crocket - in 2014, it might not have worked then.

This is the second link, and this is one that should really be read:

https://slate.com/technology/2019/04/black-feminists-alt-right-twitter-gamergate.html

There is a lot of good information here, but I want to point out two things:

1. In June 2014 you had #endfathersday, then in August GamerGate, and then as the 2016 election got closer there was the election interference. The circle of people affected keeps growing. It is still very much targeted at people marginalized by gender or race, OR BOTH, but the people impacted will continue spreading. 

2. People find an astonishing variety of ways and methods to not credit the people doing the work. Whether that is referring to specific individuals generically as Black women, or skipping entire parts of the story, there is this continued refusal to talk to the experts, and therefore a continued failure to improve things.

The article has a reference to Black women being the canary in the coal mine. The canaries are important, but they pay with their lives. 

Black women are targeted with abuse. Sometimes it is intentional, where internet trolls test things out on Black women first, because they know they will face fewer obstacles that way. That is more obviously cynical and evil

It works because too often the people who are supposed to be good won't listen and won't take it seriously. We won't be the obstacles, and so the deliberate harm is not stopped; it flourishes. 

So perhaps in feminist circles Black and Latina women report abuse by one gender studies professor, but it gets shushed and ignored until his abuse spreads so far (and to white victims) that it can't be ignored. And we get Russian election interference, and continue to get bad health and environmental outcomes, and journalism that misses really important points. There are so many things that we get wrong simply by not listening.

"Good" people have to do better. Tomorrow I hope to give some ideas for that.

Deja was fridged

I mentioned that when John Singleton directed really stupid films (which he made fun) they had other writers. Allow me to specify that those movies are Rosewood, Four Brothers, Abduction, and - to a lesser extent - 2 Fast 2 Furious, because that one did what it was supposed to do. I can't argue with that.

I'm also not going to pick on Abduction too much. Once someone decides that they want to do a mashup of The Face on the Milk Carton and The Bourne Identity and cast Taylor Lautner in it, then you just have to be glad that Singleton was the director, because it probably could have been much worse.

However, there was something I noticed about the other two. 

Rosewood - Based on a true story of the massacre of Black people and the burning of their homes. Throws in a bunch of dumb testosterone and focuses on the white characters. Written by Gregory Poirier, a white guy, born in Hawaii. He also wrote the National Treasure sequel.

Four Brothers - Loosely inspired by The Sons of Katie Elder, and written by two white English guys, who made two of the brothers white and two Black but wanted to show that race didn't matter, except that it does, and two English guys are not likely to know how that would play out. They also worked on the G.I. Joe movie.

There was definitely the potential for a better and more honest telling of the story of what happened in Rosewood, Florida in January 1923.

Not having seen the original Sons of Katie Elder - also based on a true story - I don't know what the story potential is there. 

However, I feel confident that there were things missed because the people writing had things they assumed they knew well enough, but did not. 

(See, this is where what seems to be about movies is relating more to the posts from earlier in the week, on privilege and such.)

Now we are going to talk about a flaw in John Singleton's work, even though I like him a lot and think he was a good director.

While there were a lot of things that struck me about Higher Learning, what most made me want to listen to the director commentary was for Deja, played by Tyra Banks.

She is an achiever, running track, seeing to her own grades while also helping Malik with his school work, and making him attend the peace festival building toward greater racial understanding, where she is shot, the only person besides the shooter to die, even though there were certainly plenty of other people to shoot.

Then, at the memorial, the white woman who organized the event is sad, blaming herself, and Malik comforts her. 

That just seemed so emblematic of so much today, and I needed to know if he knew it.

One really interesting thing about that was that if Kristy Swanson could have opened herself up more emotionally, Singleton would have had Malik hug Kristen. Since the actress could not, the character just got a pat. 

The thing is, Malik said he lost his girlfriend. She's the only casualty that wasn't self-inflicted. This seems like a situation where Kristen should be offering comfort to Malik. She is too caught up in herself.

That felt real, but why did it have to be the Black woman who died? Why was she the expendable one?

There is a lot in that, but this was something that was in the commentary. Singleton thought about what would affect him the most, and it would be losing his girlfriend, who at the time was Tyra Banks.

The term "fridging" comes from comic books, specifically from when Green Lantern Kyle Rayner (there have been a lot of Green Lanterns) found his girlfriend had been murdered and stuffed in the fridge. That is one event, but it was part of a larger pattern of women getting raped, murdered, and de-powered to serve as plot devices to move forward the male heroes' revenge or fall or character development.

https://www.lby3.com/wir/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_Refrigerators

The term came from comics, but the concept can be applied to a lot of media.

There are some things that Singleton got very right. When Malik's dorm roommate gets offended that Malik is moving out after the first gun incident with Remy, saying "I'm not like them!", his anger and focus on self rather than empathy for Malik's feelings is very real. The portrayal of the cops - even really nice-seeming ones - automatically treating the students differently based on color is too accurate and very frustrating. The way Remy is groomed and radicalized by Neo-Nazis is very real, including the initial sense he had that he is being preyed on, just not the way he thinks. A lot of it comes from Singleton's college experience. 

Even that it is a Black woman who keeps trying to help everyone and ends up losing her life for it has a certain accuracy, but I don't think that he saw ir in that way.

Some of that may be timing. Frequently I see traces of respectability politics in the work or hear it in the commentary, and I see that it is from 1995 or so, and it's not that surprising. 

Let me switch to Poetic Justice, Singleton's second film. 

After his debut with Boyz n the Hood - focusing on the men - Singleton wanted to look at the women. 

Many girls wrote to him saying that he had captured their experience, so I am sure there is a lot he got right. However, his main character Justice - played by Janet Jackson - is different in a lot of ways. She has inherited a large house and was born when her mother was in law school, so comes from an educated, financially better-off family with high expectations. Then her mother committed suicide, and her grandmother died recently, and she is an only child, and probably most of all, her boyfriend was killed right in front of her. Then people keep wondering why she's always wearing black and never wants to have any fun. 

That's real, and it is nice to see her connect to Lucky, and open up, and even better that the Lucky's temporary rejection does not stop her healing. However... it is easy to humanize this dream girl; it would have been more impressive to humanize Lucky's baby mama, Angel.

I suspect it never occurred to Singleton to try. 

He might get a little closer with Juanita in Baby Boy, but we never see her side of what happened with Jody's brother, and so it leaves her to be seen as not nurturing enough. Her boyfriend is shown doing more for Jody.

That doesn't make John Singleton a bad man or a bad director. It might mean that he didn't really spend enough time listening to the women around him and hearing their stories. It's a common problem. 

It is important to be able to recognize a person's shortcomings without needing to hate them and everything they do.

We will probably get to that soon too.

Director Spotlight: JOHN SINGLETON

Had already seen: "Remember the Time" (Michael Jackson video short, 1992)
Watched for this: Boyz n the Hood (1991), Poetic Justice (1993), Higher Learning (1995), Rosewood (1997), Shaft (2000), Baby Boy (2001), 2 Fast 2 Furious (2003), Four Brothers (2005), 30 for 30: Marion Jones: Press Pause (2010), Abduction (2011), American Crime Story Season 1, Episode 5: The Race Card (2016)
Have not seen: 5 television episodes (from Billions, Snowfall, and Rebels) and a video short commemorating the 25th anniversary of Poetic Justice

It's hard to believe I had never seen a John Singleton movie before this. My first was also his first, Boyz n the Hood, viewed on July 2nd, 2019. 

I had been interested in it, but I was more hesitant to see an R-rated movie in 1991. I was also really interested in Rosewood, but in addition to the rating it had gotten some pretty bad reviews. (Which were fair; I referenced that in https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2020/03/still-not-seeing-harriet.html.)

Having seen all of the features now, I really appreciate Singleton. One of his best gifts is to take stupid material and make it really fun. 

I know that there are people who love the Fast and Furious franchise, but even then they probably don't call them smart. I thought Hobbes & Shaw looked fun from the trailer; I wish Singleton had directed that! As for Abduction and Four Brothers...

Of course, the stupid ones were all written by other people. I have some mixed feelings about Shaft, where Singleton had a writing credit but was not the main writer. I mean, I am not sure how I should feel about Jeffrey Wright's performance, there seems to be some bad stereotyping going on, but it is also really entertaining,. The movie lunges into its weaknesses I guess, with the playfulness of parody but still not being parody, except for maybe when Shaft throws the badge.

I should mention that I was thrilled to find the American Crime Story episode on Netflix (thank you free trial!), because then I got to see what he did with someone else's really smart material, and it was fantastic.

It was also good to see the Marion Jones feature. That was a different kind of material and very serious. There was a lot of humanity in his direction, which I always appreciate.

I was most blown away by Higher Learning, and that led to a turning point. With some of the themes he approached, I wanted to know more and know what was deliberate and maybe if there were things that he had to leave out. I watched it again with the audio commentary on.

The really big shift was loving that option. Having listened to two others, I wish I had started sooner, though I am not sure that time constraints would have allowed that. I suspect my ideal situation - at least for good movies - is to see them in the theater on the big screen the first time, and then to watch with commentary at home. I could enjoy that.

Anyway, some things were enlightening; sometimes our interests were different. There is a scene near the end where Malik is trying to catch up with a fleeing Remy, and I loved how the shots were set up with the stairs. In the audio, Singleton focused on their fight, with portraits of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson overlooking. I had noticed Washington but not Jefferson. Hearing him talk about that did make me appreciate it more, but man, those stairs and the way it was shot! Or perhaps I got that on my own and did not need to hear him talk about it.

The thing that became very clear to me was how much John Singleton loves movies. Some directors hate having to film the stupid material of other writers. Listening to Singleton mention other directors who influenced him, and other movies, and things Columbia did for him, and people he met through Columbia, and friends and their family members and crew members' family in some parts... he loved watching movies and he loved making movies. Any job he got was a chance to work on his art, to work with people he liked... it makes sense that he could bring the fun, because he could not have loved what he was doing more.

I worried when I first started the commentary that then I would get all attached to him and I would be sad that he was dead. There was some of that, especially when I listened to the Poetic Justice commentary and heard his grief for Tupac Shakur and another friend, Dedrick Gobert, especially in the scene the two shared. And yet, if I had not listened, I probably would not have noticed some shots, and I certainly wouldn't have known that the other guy in the mail room was Janet Jackson's boyfriend, or why that spat in the beauty shop happened, or other little things that are just fun to know.

I do feel a sense of loss that John Singleton died, but I also have a much greater appreciation that he lived.

Introduction to intersection

One of the Outdoor School lessons that I remember was looking beyond food chains to food webs. We had initially been taught something linear, and then it turned out the reality was more complex. 

I can't swear to whether it was them teaching kids the simpler version first, or that even the adults were starting to understand things differently. In 1994 Mufasa explained to Simba that while lions eat antelopes, after they die they become grass, and the antelope eat grass, so clearly it is material that can be taught to children, but it can also make sense to build up to complex things.

When we understand the various kinds of discrimination, there is a lot of complexity. 

You have your basic sexism, more commonly referred to as misogyny now, but it used to be called chauvinism a lot. Those changes in terms ideally help people understand the forces behind them better. You may nonetheless notice a resistance to understanding at times, often expressed as a resentment of political correctness.

It is still a great thing to understand something and to be able to express it. There is a power in naming. It's worth trying to understand.

There is a complexity to misogyny. There is even more complexity to racism.

Racism is not just judging someone by the color of their skin, though that comes up.

Racism is also white supremacy. There was a weird reference to "Aryan" in my Western Civilazation text book about peaceful people in India being mowed down by invaders. That probably came from theories of 19th century French writer Arthur de Gobineau who had this idea of blond white people migrating and founding all of the major civilizations. That's not how it happened, but before his work became popular with Nazis, it was popular with pro-slavery people in the United States .

Therefore, the next thing that it is important to know about racism is that there is also anti-Blackness, which indicates that brown people (who may also be referred to as yellow and red - it is hard trying to keep a necessary discourse about ugly things from turning ugly) are not as good as white people, but still better than if they were Black.

I have written before about how legislation after Bacon's Rebellion made slavery permanent for Black people as a response to Black and white indentured servants banding together. Now, let's remember that quote from Lyndon B. Johnson:

If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.

I mention those to point out the value of having one race still lower than the other lower races, at least for people who want to think that way. 

(For me, going through and describing it makes me feel like crawling out of my skin, but I believe it is important. I also feel unqualified, but if it is easier as a starter to hear it from someone white and straight and cis, okay, and I will try and give some good resources in a later post.)

There are other prejudices that come into play: homophobia and ableism are big ones, but you will also see ageism at times, and growing fatphobia. Somewhere between white supremacy and anti-Blackness you can find colorism, where things like skin tones and hair texture become important. Money and class still come into play; some socialism-minded people will tell you that fixing them will fix everything else, but they are wrong.

You may also have seen the term BIPOC, for Black and Indigenous People Of Color, acknowledging that "nation of immigrants" does not describe what their historical experience has been.

Having so many vectors of hate is a complication to understanding everything. That some people will internalize the racism of the dominant culture at their own expense can complicate things. But also - and this is what we talk about when we talk about intersectionality - many people fit into more than one category of marginalization. 

So you might have a white disabled woman or a Black gay man or an Asian lesbian, and that gives them different experiences, and may cause them to relate differently. 

I want to make three points here. 

1. I know I'm repeating, but the structure is more of an issue than personal feelings. I reiterate it because that is what makes "reverse racism" a ridiculous charge. Even if I am treated with extra suspicion by a person of color, there are historical reasons for it, and there is a framework supporting me. Back to the white woman calling the police on the Black man in Central Park when he pointed out that it was not an off-leash area for her dog; she knew that calling the police and calling him a threat was dangerous. Video and awareness brought some mild consequence to her, but historically she has whiteness backing her up, and he doesn't. Let's reverse structural racism first and then worry about individual courtesy.

2. If we could get over this desire to exert power over others, we would not need to find so many things to hold against people. The dominator culture model may not have enough analysis beyond gender relations, but it does still get at a core part of the problem.

3. When there are prejudices, and especially as they are built into society and jobs and government, it is easy not to notice them if they don't apply to you. This is a key concept for when we talk about privilege. 

Here is an easy example, looking only at gender and ignoring race (which would add complexity.)

There are different requirements of attractiveness for women than men with most jobs. (Somewhat less in tech.) This tends to mean extra money spent on hair and makeup and clothes. It is magnified since women tend to be paid less, even for the same jobs. 

It is very easy for a man to not know this. It is also quite easy for men to give excuses as to why the wage gap is fair (that are wrong), and pretty easy for them to say that the extra outlay is a choice and not really necessary (also wrong). These are things outside of their own experience. They have to listen to someone with a different experience to understand it, and they are conditioned to assume that they know more about... everything, really.

Now, this discussion is going to go on hold until Monday, and we can spend Thursday and Friday talking about John Singleton, but I want to leave you with one point to ponder until Monday.

How much do you get to ignore if you are on the receiving end of combined white supremacy, anti-Blackness, and misogyny?

Navigating hierarchies in the microcosm

How's that sound for fancy talk?

I want to get to why people say to listen to Black women and what that means, and I don't want to waste a lot of time cushioning the blows to egos that people might get as they deal with their own privilege.

However, all of the factors that lead up to it are fairly complex, and a lot of it is stuff that happens without a lot of thought. It is more a matter of conditioning than nature, but that conditioning runs deep enough that it can feel unnatural to challenge it. 

My solution to that is going to be a sort of circumnavigation to it, where subsequent posts build on each other. That is my natural tendency anyway (which makes me worry about exactly how much patience reading my blog requires).

First up, I am going to link to a post that I linked to ages ago:

http://paulgraham.com/nerds.html

It is a long post that covers a range of things, and I cannot say that I completely agree with Graham's conclusions, but it fascinated me at the time. (His post is from 2003, and I first read it in 2012.) Parts of it definitely resonate with me. The relevant part for today is quite small, but I think true:

Because they're at the bottom of the scale, nerds are a safe target for the entire school. If I remember correctly, the most popular kids don't persecute nerds; they don't need to stoop to such things. Most of the persecution comes from kids lower down, the nervous middle classes.

Now I am going to tell you something from my own experience; when the most popular girl in the school brought some friends to cluster in front of me and talk about how fat I was, it felt like it was every girl in school. It was probably not more than five or six girls total, but part of the effectiveness of bullying is that it feels like it contains the mass of society, whether that is by using superior numbers or superior strength or some other edge. 

(This is also why a smaller kid who bugs you is not a bully, but a pest, though they can still make your life miserable.)

Anyway, since reading that all of those years ago, I have come to recognize it as true. My school experience was never anywhere near as stratified as The Breakfast Club or The Outsiders showed, and there were a lot of different groups with their own hierarchies. You could still point to some people as more popular though, and these were generally not your worst people. If there was a group of boys that were friends, it was probably going to be the least cute one, without a girlfriend, who would pick on you. It's logical; in lieu of other assets, he can at least assert superiority by going after someone below him. 

Like Suzy on the playground when I was six, I have also written about the cafeteria when I was fourteen before. I will probably get to them again soon because I have gotten some new insights, but here is one interesting thing about that incident: for some reason it was just girls that day.

My junior high group was more or less five other girls and four boys, with some fluctuation. We did not get picked on a lot. We did have teachers tell us to quiet down at least once when we were having too much fun, but despite being overwhelmingly nerdy we did not attract a lot of abuse, except for that day.

Perhaps it was safety in numbers, but I tend to think now that some of it was the guys being gone. 

For future reference, studying one form of bigotry does not automatically mean that you understand all forms, but you find parallels. You should not even try and draw a straight line between misogyny and racism, but if you notice similarities, pay attention.

In Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny by Kate Manne, Manne grapples with what misogyny means and how it plays out. Is it really hatred of women? Is it really dehumanizaton?

There is a lot to it, but a key part is that men expect women to be available for them, with an understanding that some women will already be property of others. That would explain why so many men after grossly coming on to a woman will then apologize to her husband after they find out that she is taken.

A less obvious example might be how men like telling random women to smile: does it reflect an actual interest in her emotional state, or is it more an injunction to not kill his buzz?

A good one to check right now is how a man handles political disagreement with women versus other men. There is a different anger at feminine disagreement, though if you ask about that, it is very offensive.

Remember, for a long time a woman was viewed as the property of her father until she married, at which time she was deeded over to her husband. Many of the moves toward legal equality have happened in my lifetime, and there are other moves that have not happened at all. It's not surprising that there are un-examined expectations.

So, in retrospect I have to wonder if the absence of any boys at our table that day made us seem like fair game. I had realized a while ago that perhaps I should not have taken the incident so much to heart in light of the fact that none of them were boys that I found attractive or nice; I did not care anything about them until then. (Maybe that was the problem.) Looking back in light of Graham's work, I can also say that none of those boys stood out athletically or musically or intellectually. 

The really cute and talented boys didn't need to bug us, but even for those boys, if they had been nice we would have talked to them. We were all pretty nice people. If they wanted to dominate, though, yeah, that approach was probably best.

Interesting tidbit: a few years ago one of the boys contacted me through Facebook and I brought up the incident. He had no memory of it. He expressed regret, because the next year he got bad acne and was really unpopular, and he would hate it if anyone treated his daughter like that. 

My experience could not seem as real as his own, or an imagined one to his traditional property. It doesn't make him a bad person, and I didn't necessarily want him to be haunted for life, but he has not engaged with patriarchy and come away a better person. If he is in a solid enough place in life he probably does not feel a need to pick on anyone, but that is not so much enlightenment as luck.

That's probably enough for today, but let me point out the obvious: these interactions are rooted in rank and power. bell hooks has used the phrase "dominator culture" for this. It turned a light on in my head, but I have not read a lot beyond that. 

The term was first popularized by Riane Eisler, who contrasts the dominator model with the partnership model, and whose work focuses on relationships between men and women. 

Therefore, it relates well to today's content, but we will be moving beyond that to intersectionality.

The unbearable whiteness of tech bros

That title may feel a little in-your-face. 

It happened because I got mad. I got mad at myself for not just coming right out and saying that the problem was white people, and then I got mad that it felt so necessary to cushion the blow because white people are so sensitive about their skin color. 

Allow me to insert my periodic reminder that I am white and I do know it. I'm not trying to fool anyone about that. I am also not ashamed of it, nor am I trying to make anyone else feel ashamed of being white. However, our society has a legacy of patriarchy that has reflected and sustained a certain power structure, and we have to deal with that. As much as I love kindness, an individual commitment to niceness will not fix this.

Now let's get back to the movie.

In The Social Dilemma we get a parade of white men (Jaron Lanier's dreadlocks do not make him any less white), most of whom got rich off of social media and now feel bad about it. They have been thinking about it deeply - one has co-founded a center - and yet somehow they don't offer anything really helpful. 

Maybe they are talking to the wrong people.

Personally, I wanted to scream "Where are the Black women?"

I had included multiple links in the previous posts that approached that, but here is another article I like:

https://techonomy.com/2020/09/the-social-dilemmas-blindspot/

We disagree somewhat on the statistics - I remember an additional brown guy - but I am not going to watch it again. It wasn't that great, and it's more important to follow the information that will help. There are people who have been working on this. I want to say more about that later. Today I want to focus on the reasons for the gap.

Early in the film, the interviewer asked several of the subjects to name the problem and got a bunch of blank stares. I was saying "People. It's people. Say people." Then someone did say it, so we're getting closer, right? But still not doing anything with it.

They did kind of poke at how structural racism can be a factor. There was a line about it being white guys, and they showed some footage related to white supremacists. The family was carefully made a blended family, so you had two races represented. And yet, they still just couldn't come out and identify racism as a key problem. The white family members had more character development; the white talking heads got more screen time.

Here's the thing: people - at least especially white people - get easily offended about racism. I felt that pressure myself in just writing about the movie, and yet, I know that I am not going to get anywhere without addressing it; I would like to see proof that Jeff Orlowski knows that too. 

Even more, I would like to see Tristan Harris (no relation) talk about the conversations he has had with people who have traced the spread of white supremacy through different aspects of internet use. I would like to see him talk about seeking out people who have faced online harassment. Many of those people will be women, and women of color, and Black women, and they will be queer and non-binary and some will have disabilities and knowing all of that WHY IS THIS A PARADE OF WHITE MEN?

No offense, white men. I am fond of many of you. I also know that society has prioritized you in a way that can make it very uncomfortable for you to have to consider the opinions of people who are not white and male. I have seen levels of offense taken at some questions that should be really surprising (because the questions are actually pretty mild), but then it happens often enough that it loses the ability to surprise. No, it doesn't mean that everything is easy for you; but that was never the point. When you won't listen to that, though, and when you won't allow a point that doesn't have you at the center, well, then you suck.

And when a subset of white men - and mind you, they are frequently not poor white men but raised in affluent areas and getting good educations with connection to capital - controls the conversation around technology, there should be nothing surprising about the technology reflecting and exacerbating patriarchy. It would require effort and awareness to change that.

Therefore, it is also completely logical that these are not the best people to solve the problem.

I mean, I guess it's nice that some of them acknowledge there is a problem. When we say "If you are not part of the solution you are part of the problem", I can see how they think they should become the solution. Great. It's going to require de-centering. It's going to require listening to people who do not look or sound like you, and paying them and crediting them. 

"Disrupt" is a very popular word in tech, but if the only disruption is that some new white men become rich, it's not that big a disruption, is it? 

To be fair, The Social Dilemma focused on the bad that is done, while briefly mentioning the good in the beginning. There is a lot of good, and people from the margins have used that bandwidth effectively, and then been targeted for it. Listen to them.

And because I think a lot of people have heard that we need to listen to Black women but don't really understand what that means or why it is important, that is what I am going to try to address next.

Horror un-fan

When I was a child I did not understand why anyone would write something with an unhappy ending. If you were in control, and could choose what happened, why would you make bad things happen? It's not that I objected to there being conflicts for adventure, of course, but it should all resolve in a positive way.

Decades later, I guess my first answer was that you are not really in control. I found that on my first novel; it did not end the way I had been planning on. My mind was doing all of these leaps and somersaults to try and make it come out right, and then it was clear that it wasn't right. For those people and circumstances, they were eventually going to end up together but it wasn't going to happen then.

Later, I would read short stories by novelists I loved and be kind of appalled. It turns out the sometimes the short form makes it fun to experiment with the dark side of things, whereas with the longer commitment of a full work, that would feel very different. I have written some dark, short stuff.

The thing that hasn't changed, though, and I hope it doesn't, is that I still fill my work with good people who try and do good things. Not everyone is like that, but I try to still see the humanity of those who aren't even trying. Ultimately no matter how frustrating people are (and that can be a lot), I still love people and am good at liking them. There have been books that I should have liked in terms of plot and everything, but where I was ultimately held back by the contempt for humanity that I felt coming from the writer. That is my sensibility.

When I don't like horror, it's not that I get scared, or grossed out, or anything obvious. I just don't enjoy it.

This was not true of old classic horror; I have a real fondness for old B movies, especially when they are getting mocked by late night hosts. There have been a lot of movies that are as terrible as they are fun. I love those. 

I don't love movies that fetishize how lovely women's bodies can be as you kill and dismember them, especially when they deserve it for having sex, or for being beautiful but out of reach for some guy. 

I don't love movies that have a group of people that you care about dying one by one, until finally the last one gets to kill the monster. Making them people you don't care about doesn't help it for me. Also, making the last character die instead of surviving doesn't help.

Based on my basic objections to horror, things like the surge in popularity of "torture porn"  or the more nihilistic movies where no one overcomes anything aren't going to solve it for me.

For the record, I think when I remember questioning why people would make movies like that, it was probably due to my father's fondness for Clint Eastwood movies. Whether they were the Westerns or the Dirty Harry movies, those were bleak, from a humanity standpoint. Maybe I am not surprised that Clint turned out the way he did.

I read some pretty bleak non-fiction, but I want my movies to be fun. However, if someone makes a really good point about something via horror, then I may feel like I need to watch it.

Get Out  and Us had a lot to think about. I don't regret seeing them. I kind of got the points they were making by reading about them, but watching is different.You feel it more.

I could never enjoy a Purge film, but I get why they might be important. I might get something out of Bird Box or A Quiet Place, but I don't think I want to.

If I give in and watch more horror, it will probably be for Bong Joon-ho, with Parasite and The Host. If I don't want to, it is because of Ki-jung and Hyun-seo, but I suspect their respective losses are deliberate. I think he is making a point; if I do watch them it will be for that.

I would probably still be happier watching those than watching the Bad Idea movies.

Related posts:

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2015/04/the-other-gotham.html

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2018/11/the-ghost-and-mrs-muir-was-stupid-movie.html

Director Spotlight: JORDAN PEELE

Watched for this: Get Out (2017), Us (2019) 

It is not often that you can say you have seen a director's entire oeuvre, but with Jordan Peele, I can.

(I am one movie away from having seen all of John Singleton's features, and I have seen all features directed by Denzel Washington, but there are television episode that don't always seem worth the effort, except for one that totally was.)

It may make the most sense to compare Peele to Denzel Washington - director of three features - where the directing is competent without being showy. I felt more of an emphasis with Washington on bringing out the best in the actors and going for the heart, but that may be more due to the material. 

It wouldn't even make sense to go for heart-warming in horror.

I cannot do a good job of comparing Peele to other horror directors, because I do not watch a lot of horror. 

I am pretty sure that Peele has.  

I did watch three seasons of Key & Peele for this. That was a comedy show but they brought in horror elements a lot; not just for Halloween. Some of that was mining tropes (my favorite was probably the sketch with the vampires who didn't really enjoy all the leather and partying), but some of it was also introducing weird pieces of eeriness and existential horror into odd places.

I will probably go more into my own feelings about horror tomorrow, but I watched Get Out and Us (with trepidation) because I thought they were important. I thought they were dealing with important things. 

Eddie Murphy had a pretty well known bit back in the day (and Peele was inspired by it) about how you can't make a horror film with a Black family in it because when they move into a haunted house and find out it is haunted, they will leave. 

"What a beautiful house!"
(Demonic voice) "Get out."
"Too bad we can't stay."

There is something in there about Black people having more sense, but the corollary is that horror movies involve people making a lot of poor choices (a Geico commercial has teens running past an escape care to hide behind chainsaws) to keep the plot moving.

Because of this I felt that there would be pressure on Peele to make it so that you could feel that your characters were smart, and their choices were reasonable, but they were still getting into trouble.

Some spoilers will follow, though they will probably be more confusing than revealing if you have not seen the movies.

The removal of stupid choices was handled well. With Us, the trouble follows the family home. They are in a place where they should be safe and have every reason to be.

Get Out is a little trickier. Chris has reasons to leave the rest of the Armitage family behind, but doesn't. The ways in which they are terrible are so terribly normal, and also there is Rose. Because she acts like she is overestimating her family, and then angry at herself for doing so, he does not doubt her until the last possible moment, when it is too late.

There are two other things with that, though. 

His early loss of his mother and the absence of family has left him more vulnerable. A girlfriend is more important and harder to give up. That's what makes him as easier target; it is not just that he is vulnerable, but there are fewer people to come looking for him when he disappears. That makes the Armitage family more gruesome.

But Chris still has a friend. 

As ridiculous as some of Rod's ideas seem, and as much as he seems to inflate the power and authority that are his due as a TSA agent, it is Rod's friendship that saves Chris. It is also Chris having a pet that needs care, so that Chris and Rod communicate more and that thread is established.

As creepy as Us is, it mattered to me that Adelaide had to check on Umbrae, and that she tried to stop Pluto from dropping the match. They were children, and they looked like her children. Even though at that point you are finding out some unsettling things about her, even though at this point she has killed and will kill at least once more, she is not callous about it. That smile as they drive away is unsettling - will she stop caring? - but humanity is not extinguished yet.

Not exactly heart-warming, perhaps, but still something that I care about.

Some thoughts on the vice-presidential debate

This was not what I intended to write, but it was another bad day. Some elements repeated from yesterday, and will play a role again tomorrow. There was also a completely surprising new development that will be keeping us busy for a while. I feel like screaming a lot, so I might as well write about politics.

1. Pence really cannot stand women being able to talk, can he? 

2. You need the ability to kill the mic, yes, but also, there really needs to be fact-checking, especially with his swine flu nonsense.

3. It shouldn't be that hard to say that you support the peaceful transfer of power. I get Trump not admitting it, the same way I get him not denouncing racism; expectations could not go lower. But Pence is the one who is theoretically not a malignant narcissist and capable of speaking in complete sentences. If he were to say that they respect the will of the American people and the law, there is still plenty of room to get in "But I believe we are going to win", and it would be at least a little comforting. Sure, Donald would not like stepping down, but if everyone around him accepts it, they can probably get him to leave with them. It's scary.

3a. Though it was a little funny that he couldn't admit that Trump is old. Failure to actually answer the question asked was in no way surprising.

4. Obviously, vote. Vote early. Drop off ballots instead of mailing them if you can. Ask for help getting to the polling place if you need it. I guess record if there are people intimidating you. I wish we didn't have to think about things like this, but we do. Put all of that together and vote.

I realize that is focusing on the problems with those currently in power, rather than on the qualities of those whom I hope will soon be in power. It is hard to ignore the horror show.

However, I should also add that while I was not initially thrilled with Biden being the nominee, I heartily approve of Harris being his running mate. I thought it showed growth in him, and a willingness to do better that seems to be borne out by his messaging. And then, watching someone capable of kindness, empathy, and deep thoughts has been a nice change. Four years is a long time to miss that. 

So, yes - enthusiastically now - Biden/Harris 2020.