Thursday, December 26, 2024
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Confluence

Possibilities: From Tokenism to Community

Reading Time: 8 minutes Veterans of racial justice work have discovered that tokenism is often coupled with assimilation. When a person gets chosen to “break the glass ceiling,” implicit in that selection is the message that “We invited you into our exclusive group. You represent (x) (x=marginalized group). You must act like us, speak like us, behave like us and be loyal to us, what we stand for, our values, our ways, and our foundations.”

This action of tokenism is done as “the method of limited access that gives false hope to those left behind and blames them for ‘not making it.’ Tokenism is a form of co-optation. It takes the brightest and best of the most assimilated, reward them with position and money (though rarely genuine leadership and power) and then uses them as a model of what is necessary to succeed, even though there are often no more openings for others who may follow the model.”

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Confluence

Kavanaugh, Rape Culture, and the Time for an Important Course Correction

Reading Time: 6 minutes What if there were a groundswell of not just women but men, all calling out the entitled mentality that normalizes the displays of dominance included in every assault? There are those who lament that every small physical gesture is scrutinized and labeled, these days. I think this is a small price to pay as we try to change a worldwide culture where rape is a weapon and a silent epidemic rages, in the form of the indelible, excruciating memories of the victims, without any real consequences for the vast majority of their tormentors.

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Confluence

Why “I’m not racist” is only half the story | Robin DiAngelo

Reading Time: 3 minutes While we who are white tend to be fragile in that it doesn’t take much to upset us around race, the impact of our response is not fragile at all. It’s a kind of weaponized defensiveness, weaponized hurt feelings. And it functions really, really effectively to repel the challenge. As a white person I move through the world racially comfortable virtually 24/7. It is exceptional for me to be outside of my racial comfort zone, and most of my life I’ve been warned not to go outside my racial comfort zone.

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CNN: These images of women around Kavanaugh evoke a familiar alibi

Reading Time: 5 minutes It is also the case that this is a way of rhetorically displacing the victim — if the wife and family are the injured parties, the woman who has brought forth the charge is understood as victimizing a woman and children too.

A great deal of empirical evidence has shown that people who commit acts of intimate and sexual violence often do it more than once. But it is also true that people can commit horrific acts of violence against others and still be good to those they love. The psychological and cultural inability to come to terms with that reality results in many victims being disbelieved and treated quite badly.

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Confluence

Huffpo: Brett Kavanaugh’s Testimony Was A Spectacle Of Angry Male Bonding

Reading Time: 5 minutes The hearing was a celebration of male anger ― the power of anger to bring men together, to reinforce their certainty about what is owed to them as men and, of course, to sweep women’s anger and pain to the side. Kavanaugh and the Republican senators rarely addressed Blasey or her credibility directly; rather confusingly, the party line was that she, too, was a victim, and that they bore no ill will toward her.

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Confluence

They Hate Her Because They Believe Her

Reading Time: 4 minutes This week I heard a sexual assault victim recount that as her coworker voiced his doubt about the veracity of Dr. Ford’s story, she’d spoken up that she had a similar experience. Her co-worker’s response was “Oh! Well, I believe you, I just don’t believe her.” Not surprisingly this is painfully reminiscent of the people who said they absolutely would vote for a woman president, “just not that woman”. It’s so much easier to doubt “that woman” when she isn’t standing in front of you. But “that woman” is not just telling her story, she is telling our stories.

Our stories are believable, and that is exactly why a misogynistic society will always be determined to destroy our credibility because as long as our stories can be framed as lies the behavior of rape culture can continue.

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Confluence

Possibilities: From Collective Trauma to Collective Healing

Reading Time: 10 minutes We heal this collective trauma by confronting it, understanding it, releasing the pain of it, and transcending it, as a group. And not just a group of women, but as a society. The first step is to confront it.

Like Salman Rushdie, the Islamic writer observed after the fatwa was issued against him, “Those who do not have power over the story that dominates their lives, power to retell it, rethink it, deconstruct it, joke about it, and change it as times change, truly are powerless, because they cannot think new thoughts.” 

Regardless of the gender you inhabit, the times we live in demands that you confront your story about “women,” our bodies, our identities, our sexuality, our value, our stereotyping and our debasement. We do this by taking power over the story. Examine it. Interrogate it. Name it. As a leader, you have an obligation to make sure that you explore your story around women.

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