Nothing profound this week (so far) but I wanted to share a link that I've found useful in my work:
http://postwhoreamerica.com/sex-work-in-2013-no-debate/
Melissa Gira Grant does a lovely job rounding up stories and blogs about sex workers from a sex-worker-centric viewpoint. It's broken up into topics, for those of you teaching classes. I'm particularly fond of the labor section.
Thanks, B, for the heads up.
Thursday, January 2, 2014
Saturday, December 28, 2013
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.
Friday, November 29, 2013
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."
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."
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