Old school racism and subsequent self-righteousness

I am a Research Associate. That's my title. But at my research-oriented university, there are scads of Postdocs. (All of our titles are capitalized like that.) Someone in the Postdoc Office decided to throw a mixer and invite both the Postdocs and the Research Associates. I was happy to go, as I don't meet a lot of university people outside my department and I'd been missing the company of people so recently forged in the fire of grad school hell. 

I work in a bubble. My project is very community-oriented so I usually face away from the university and out towards our neighbors. When I'm focused on campus, I interact with folks from the College of Arts and Sciences, the LGBT Center, the Office for Diversity and Inclusion, you get the drift. It is easy for me to forget that most of my university is focused on hard science and medicine. We are a tiny slice of humanities in a sea of quantifiable data. 

So I show up to this postdoc lunch, which is at the biomedical research building, a twenty minute walk away from the Social Justice Institute in below-freezing weather. It was like entering another world. Then I remembered - all of these people are scientists. I can argue all day that anthropology is a science, especially archaeology and physical anthropology, but I do think of myself as more of a humanist, a social scientist on those days when I whip out my qualitative data analysis software.

Secretly, I love science. In high school, all I wanted to do was become a biologist. I was lucky to go to a school where we were doing recombinant DNA experiments (admittedly low-level stuff) back in the 1990s. I took the regular 4 years plus an independent study. I love the smell of Bunsen burners. I rocked at calculus. I even was only a little squeamish when the rat-mom we were breeding ate her litter over the weekend. Then - well, life. I dropped out of college for four years and when I went back, I felt out of the loop in science and I met anthropology, that dark mistress that promised answers for all of social conundrums I encountered during my extended hiatus from higher learning. In my heart of hearts, I know I could have been one of them, the lab-dwellers, in their white coats and safety glasses. 

The second thing that struck me at this little mixer was that there was 2:1 of men to women. It wasn't all men, but it definitely wasn't parity. Throwing anxiety to the wind, I made myself a burrito bowl and approached a table. Seated were three men, one white, two Asian (and the reason for me mentioning race will become apparent shortly). Eventually, the other half of the table was filled with three more men and another woman, but our conversations stayed divided into halves. 

Two of the men were in physics and the third was in biostatistics, although his PhD was in theoretical mathematics. We talked about where we went to grad school, at which point the white guy gestured wildly at his hat until I noticed that he went to my alma mater. So there was that. He talked about loving that tiny little Washington town while I talked about how eager I had been to get out of there.

We did the "What department are you from?" chit-chat. I had to explain what social justice is, never mind that the university has an entire (albeit small) institute devoted to it. Trying to relate it to their experiences, I mentioned Engineers Without Borders, at which point, one guy was like, "so it is about science." Sigh. 

When I brought up the fact that I worked on racism, the white guy looked at me and asked, "But has it been scientifically proven that certain characteristics don't go with certain races? I mean, Asians don't want to lose the idea that they are inherently good at math, right?" With this, he looks to our two tablemates for support. One shrugs noncommittally and the other says, "Not necessarily." But at this point, my self-righteousness is going full force. "Of course it has been proven scientifically," I thunder. I launch into the full-blown, by-the-book, American-Anthropological-Association rant about differences between "races" being less significant than those within the categories along with the concepts of social constructs and hegemony.

He then looks at me and says, "But isn't it true that people from Europe and North America are smarter than other people? Like, hasn't that been tested?" Oh my god, I think to myself, he's serious. I spend a good portion of my days thinking about institutionalized racism, structural racism, neoliberalism, neocolonialism; I had forgotten that people are still flat-out racist, in an interpersonal way that goes beyond white privilege. I then hold forth on what exactly those tests measure and how it is a form of imperialism to believe the Global North is somehow better, smarter, more sophisticated, whatever, than all other human societies. I hadn't been that riled up since grad school. I have to admit, it felt good.

The community I work in struggles with the image many Black communities struggle with, made even more problematic by the fact that my university often tells new students, particularly freshman, not to cross the bridge (where this community starts) because they will be subject to violence. The racial tensions are high and are compounded by the wealth surrounding the university and the dire economic straits experienced by many in this community. All that to say, I am sensitive to how people talk about this community.

One of the Asian guys asks me how safe this community is, as he has heard it is dangerous to ride the bus (which I do everyday) and he worries about his wife. I tell him the reputation is overblown and that the people are lovely and that I like working in this community. Then the white guy tells us that he heard that "In Cleveland, twenty years ago, a white person didn't have to stop at red lights at night because they would be carjacked by Black people." At this point, I asked him if he realized how crazy that sounded. He got defensive, saying that wasn't what he believed but that's just what he heard. So I asked him what he was trying to achieve by repeating that story. He pretty much stopped talking after that.

I continued to talk to my tablemates, who are doing some really interesting work, even if I can't follow the specifics. We had a good conversation about economic disparity and how hard it is to meet new people in the city. Finally, lunch was over and I returned to my office, feeling like the defender of the oppressed, the voice of righteousness, a gladiator. I told my co-workers about the encounter and we collectively railed against injustice. I even posted about it on Facebook.

A week later, I met up with one of the guys I met at that lunch, who is originally from Hong Kong. He mentioned that I seemed to be looking to him for support when the white guy was saying some outlandish things but he understood that this guy might have never been exposed to any of these ideas. He told me a little about how he grew up and it made me reflect on my own privilege. I wondered if I might not have been equally oblivious to social justice issues had I continued down my path to biology without all the hiccups I experienced while growing into myself.

I wouldn't have changed the encounter. Someone needed to call that guy on his bullshit and maybe make him think about why he was saying the things he was saying. But was I arguing with him because I was being an ally? I was enjoying the sense of  self-righteousness, of knocking him down a peg from his white, male, cis-gendered pedestal. I liked repeating the story and coming out the hero. Upon reflection, I even hesitated to blog about it. In the end, I feel like the story bears re-telling, not for my stunning command of anti-racist rhetoric, but as a reminder that old-school racism still exists, and not just in the backwoods of Mississippi (speaking from personal experience and not to disparage a whole state's worth of people). It is present in our institutes of higher learning. Institutional and structural racism are not simply legacies but are actively enabled. I needed to be reminded of this.

Don't panic!

Before my class in Portugal on Sexuality & Morality, I was thinking of morality with a capital "M," moral-majority-morality, the kind that got me in trouble at Catholic school. After my week of anthropology in warmer climes, I came to accept a kind of provisional anthropology of moralities. From the outside looking in, it's easy to see US morality (of the kind preached by conservatives and liberals alike) as the imperialist enterprise that it is. It is even possible to be swimming in it and be critical of it, but it is much more difficult.

One of the coolest things about being an anthropologist is that you get to learn, deep down in your bones, that there are different manners of living that are meaningful and true. For me, that sense first developed in a real way when I did my MA fieldwork in Belize, in a way that not a hundred ethnographies prepared me for. I was reminded of this in Lisbon, although the stay was shorter and differently aimed. However, most of my radical relocation has been within the United States, so while I'm good at spotting regional differences quickly, I still get stuck in a US frame of mind. Ethnocentrism is a bitch.

Part of what makes me suspicious of morality is not the notion that there is right and there is wrong. It's the totalizing narrative of it, at least in the way I was raised. There is little room for relativism. In practice, people seem to resolve moral dilemmas in ways that recognize that right and wrong shift, but there is no place for that in dogma. That is where morality gets dangerous - it is wielded as a weapon, usually against people who are already marginalized. People preaching morality recognize themselves as agents with the ability to navigate right and wrong, yet they insist that others cannot possibly distinguish between the two unless explicit instructions are tattooed on their foreheads. Of course, they know how those directions should read.

I have been working on a talk about moral panics the last few weeks, specifically how throwing sexuality into any moral argument wipes out rational thought or reasonable debate. Case in point, after my talk, a man shared that he was talking with other men about gun control, which he supported. His acquaintances, to counter his position, immediately jumped to, "What if someone was raping your wife or kids?" Of course. Because that's a defensible position - "Sure, I'd just let them rape away since I don't believe everyone has the right to own an AR-15."

The thing about moral panics is that they require both a folk devil and a group that is perceived to be threatened, which represents a threat to the very moral fabric of society. The folk devil is the person persecuted for the threat. For example, during the White Slavery era at the beginning of the 20th century, there was fear that evil Jewish monopolists were luring innocent women, including their own daughters, into forced prostitution. This popular narrative allowed for the surveillance, restriction, and mistreatment of Jewish people in the United States. Suspicion was also cast on the French, the Chinese, and the Italian (all immigrants). A panic also works to control the population being threatened, in this case women, particularly those who were moving into cities for industrial work.

As I have waxed, poetic or otherwise, about my feelings about the current framing of human trafficking, I'll just point out that (as I learned in my research for this talk) that the Trafficking in Persons Report (2011), authored by the US State Department, cites, with nary a suggestion of irony or critique, tracts from 1910 to support their claim that the sexual traffic in women has a long history in this country.

Seriously?

The ingredients of moral panics can be seen in the Satanic ritual abuse hoopla of the 1980s, the vilification of gay men (for just one example, see the political campaign in Florida in the 1970s-80s), and the McCarthy Era post-WWII.

Lynching in the US at the turn of the 20th century had deadly consequences, unlike what we see in current panics (although as the San Antonio 4 prove, loss of liberty is still an issue) but the same mindset is there - fear of the "other" cast as sexual assault against women or children to justify inequality and distract from other injustices occurring at the same time. Racism and beliefs about the body combined to result in particularly savage behaviors.

I think any anthropology of morality (or -ies) needs to address the outbreak of moral panics. I don't know enough about cross-cultural instances although I suspect rapid globalization is spreading the tendency now, if it was not present before. If you live or work outside of the US, I'd love to hear whether any of this panicking behavior matches up with what you've seen.

I know of a current example in Syria, where the Assad regime (among others) accused the rebels of soliciting sexual jihad from Tunisian girls and women. Der Spiegel and France24 seem convinced that this is a case of panic, while the Huffington Post and the BBC are not so quick to dismiss it out of hand.

On a personal level, I can picture panic being created. I'm from New Orleans. I left the year before Katrina hit. A dear friend, made homeless by the storm, was travelling away from the city. I asked why she didn't go to a shelter rather than risking a long drive with no definite end in sight. She replied, "They're raping babies in the Superdome." This from a college-educated, normally reasonable woman who had just suffered a terrible trauma. No doubt, madness ensued in the wake of that storm. I won't forget that reaction - at her most vulnerable, that is what drove her over the edge. She had no reliable source for this assertion, just what people were saying.

The media thrives on this stuff. When you see salacious photos of victimized women and children, when you hear impossible statistics that rile up your self-righteousness, when the only "good" you can do is to "raise awareness" by parroting the headlines, ask yourself what you are really accomplishing. Is changing your Facebook status going to impact the material living conditions of young women in Tunisia? Are you contributing to a conversation about how to end gendered violence or are you just giving into the joys of gossip and moralism? What social justice issues are being obscured in the name of the panic? Are you ignoring the atrocities of war, economic oppression, mass incarceration, or unending surveillance in order to protect the "safety" of women and children by fomenting heightened passions? Where is the morality in panicking?

My advice to you, in the immortal words of Douglas Adams - "Don't panic."

His tongue on her neck

As part of my recent intensive course in Portugal, we were required to engage in a fieldwork exercise. Between Friday night's group dinner and Saturday's afternoon class, we had to find somewhere in Lisbon to observe something to do with sexuality and morality. From what I understand, in the previous cohort, many people went to church. My classmates had different ideas.

Of course I looked for a leather bar. I found an English website devoted to gay bars in the city. There was exactly one leather bar listed. It was a men-only deal and stress was placed on being in fetish gear. I think had I had the correct fetish gear, I could have talked my way in. Conversely, had I been male, I could have gotten away with jeans and my Docs. Luckily, I had a back up plan. There were two lesbian-friendly gay bars.

That Friday night was the kickoff for the Lisbon Queer Film Festival. Most of our group went out to eat at a traditional Portuguese restaurant. (Lured away from my vegetarianism by fresh octopus, I succumbed. Let's just say I wouldn't recommend deep-fried cephalopod. I know some people dig calamari, but it's just not for me.) Afterwards, we climbed about a million stairs to get to the Bairro Alto, which is a charming district during the day that transforms into a hubbub of nightlife after dark, like the French Quarter of Lisbon. The Queer Film Festivals was holding their opening party there at midnight and several of my classmates decided to do their fieldwork there.

On the way, we had the mandatory shot of ginja, a type of liquor soaked in sour cherries that is common in the region. I don't normally drink, so it went to my head pretty quickly. It also tasted a little like cough syrup, which probably says more about how people in the US flavor all their medicine to taste like candy than any judgement call about another culture's method of imbibing spirits.

We went to a bar Valerio was familiar with which was also listed on my website as a gay bar. There was nothing overt, no rainbow flags or anything, but the clientele was split between male/male couples and male/female customers, so the bar seemed at least gay-friendly. Our group had a couple of drinks while everyone waited for the Queer Film Festival party to start. A good friend met me in Portugal for the last half of my time there. She and I decided to split off to visit the lesbian bars on my list before we were too much in our cups to get any good info.

The thing about anthropology, for me, is that it allows me to explore fearlessly in ways I don't feel empowered to do when I am just plain Misty. I am shy and socially awkward in new situations. I have little filter and tend to talk about inappropriate things, making other people uncomfortable unintentionally, which embarrasses me. As an anthropologist, however, I am fearless and bold. I listen more and am less likely to blurt out the first thing that comes into my head as I am engaged in embodied learning. I know that it appeared like I was taking my assignment too seriously when I could have hung out and drank with the group, but I wanted to learn more about Lisbon in a way I couldn't do with a group.

Fieldwork, even for a couple of hours, would be hampered by my nonexistent Portuguese, although many people spoke English. I decided a bar would be a good place to at least watch people, their body language, their eye contact, their dress. Earlier that day, Miguel Vale de Almeida came to our class to discuss the political climate surrounding the LGBT movement in Portugal. He had noted that the community isn't well defined, in part because many people do not come out in the same way they do in the United States (again, one day I'll post on that topic). I was curious to see how a website directed toward Anglophone gay men would classify a lesbian bar.

First off, let me say that bars in Lisbon are tiny. I mean, everything in Portugal (except the castles and monasteries) tended to be smaller than the sprawling spaces I am accustomed to. But seriously, Purex could have fit inside my one bedroom apartment. For me, I begin to study the field by analyzing the space as it is being used. This gives me a starting point, a way to work myself into analysis.

The bar was divided into three areas - behind the bar, the front room with tables and chairs, and the back room with overstuffed chairs and a couch and a small dance floor with a live DJ. Sad to say, I did not visit the bathrooms, and so cannot speak to those areas. Again, there were no rainbow flags or anything that would obviously point out the nature of the bar as I am familiar with in the US. Behind the bar, however, there was a bird cage full of lipsticks, all open and pushed up. I am not sure what it symbolized, but I found it noteworthy. With more time, I would have asked about it.

Rather than rehash all of my fieldnotes, I'll get to the point of the title of this post. The bar was entirely staffed by women. During my time in Lisbon, I saw a handful of women of any age with short hair. Honestly, I was glad mine had grown out to pixie length since I shaved it last June. The women working at the bar and the one spinning had shorter hair (except one). I am not sure whether this indicates a sign of gender bending in the same way it (sometimes) does in the US.

For sure, there were gay men there as customers, mostly lounging in the back space on the comfy couches, cuddling one another, or in one instance, dance together very intimately. There were two genderqueer individuals, possibly transmasculine. They were hanging out with the gay men and left shortly after the dancing started.

A group of six women came in together and began dancing together. I couldn't tell if they were necessarily straight or queer, as they danced relatively far apart and were not overtly sexual. They were certainly enjoying themselves without male company.

I did see two instances of women touching one another, in one case a woman stroking another's breast and a woman with her hand cupping another's butt. However, and this is a big however, both of the instances were done in front of what was obviously one of the women's boyfriends. All my years stripping, I am not a stranger to performing lesbianism for a male gaze. I do not think that invalidates same-gender desire but it puts a different spin on things, speaking from experience. During my heyday of sexiness for money, there was a marked difference between the women I flirted with onstage and the backstage romances. Maybe, one day, I'll come clean about that.

The most notable event of the night, however, was a disruption of this supposedly lesbian-friendly space. After an hour of dancing/fieldwork (big selling point of anthropology - these can be the same thing!), a man and two women came on the dance floor. He was obviously inebriated. He mugged for his friends. He inserted himself in other people's pictures. He took up a lot of space on the tiny dance floor. The women who had been in the center gave way to his antics, moving to the edges of the space. This was not done in deference but rather to avoid his antics. My friend and I continued to dance, making allowances for his general sloppiness.

After fifteen minutes of this, he caught my eye and started to edge in on us. Let me make it clear that my friend and I were clearly dancing *with each other* and not as two women dancing in the same space. The more insistent he became on inserting himself, the more we nuzzled up to one another. Then he started dancing behind my friend in order to force me to look at him. Then he licked her neck. I didn't actually see this, but I felt her shudder. I don't know what standard protocol is in other countries, but given my work experience, I have handled more than my fair share of drunk men edging in on my space. I shoved him away with my hand on his face, all the time smiling and laughing like I wasn't going to kick his ass. The reprieve only lasted a couple of minutes, as soon he was dancing next to me and eventually kissed me on the cheek. Once again, I nonchalantly shoved my hand in his face and pushed him away.

It's a stripper trick- pretend like you're flattered that Mr. Can't-Keep-His-Hands-To-Himself finds you irresistible, but you just have other things you need to be doing at that exact moment. I have poured beer on men, stepped on their hands with my heels, slapped them across the face, and worse, all the while smiling like it's a big joke. If you frame it the right way, you can get a guy to leave you alone without turning it into a situation that could result in escalating tension. It's a sad fact, but as a woman, I have to live with the fact that if I reject a man in the wrong way things can go tits-up quickly. Obviously preferring the company of a woman over a drunk party boy brings about another set of risks. I don't know how other women handle unwanted attention. Deflect and diffuse are my preferred methods.

In this case, I didn't feel too threatened as Mr. CKHHTH was with two other women, so it wasn't likely that he would press the issue after a couple of theatrical gestures to leave us the fuck alone. He did, eventually stumbling out the bar after a few more songs. My friend and I enjoyed some more dancing. At 2 a.m. we called it a night, although the party was picking up a bit. We blew kisses to the DJ and made our way back to the hotel, a bit tipsy and sweaty, but none the worse for wear.

What I found really interesting was reporting on my experience to my classmates. They were affronted on my behalf. I saw it as an example of how same-gender desire among women is not respected in the same way it is with men. I understood it as a pedestrian example of patriarchy and heteronormativity. But they were offended that such a thing would even happen. Although some of the men in my class identified as queer, I am not aware that any of the women did. I don't know if it was my experience as a queer woman, as a US citizen, as an ex-stripper, or what, but it didn't surprise me that man felt entitled to touch us, not in the way it seemed to shock them. One woman even asked if I complained to the bar so they could throw him out. That didn't even occur to me.

This being a class on morality, the question became whether he had acted immorally. It is tough to answer that sufficiently. I don't know enough about culture in Lisbon in general, much less nightclub mores, to judge. I had witnessed vivid examples of lesbianism performed for a male gaze that night, so he might not have been too off in thinking his attentions were appropriate. Once we made it obvious that we were having no part of it, he left us alone. For me, the most disappointing thing about the experience was that the other patrons, particularly the gay men, did nothing to intervene. When I was making it a habit of patronizing gay clubs at home (whatever state that might have been), they were pretty exclusively non-heterosexual. In similar situations, other people inserted themselves between drunk-straight-and-clueless and the objects of his (yes, exclusively his) unwanted attention. In Lisbon - no help.

It was an interesting experience and one that I am glad I had. It is at the ruptures that we learn about the structure. It is what makes it exciting to wake up every day and be an anthropologist. I didn't judge all of the continent based on the actions of one drunk man, although I was oddly touched that my classmates were so moved by what I considered as little more than a data point. That was my experience with heteronormativity in Lisbon, which was remarkable in its complete familiarity.