Quote of the Day - 20.03.2013

'Bossy Boots' and 'Man-Up'


Ok... I cheated, today I dont really have a quote, just something I want to talk about after watching videos like these - http://www.upworthy.com/calling-girls-this-word-may-seem-harmless-but-why-are-boys-never-called-it

and this one

http://www.upworthy.com/theres-something-absolutely-wrong-with-what-we-do-to-boys-before-they-grow-into-men

WATCH THESE BEFORE READING ON
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Such campaigns aren't saying anything I haven't heard before, there are all sorts of phrases we use in everyday language without thinking of the consequences they might have. Now, as I have mentioned before, I am lucky. I grew up in a household where I never even considered that my being female would ever be anything more than a simple fact of nature, and certainly that it might stop me from doing whatever it is I want to do. After all, even if the woman thing counts against me, I'm white, British, and (by the standards of most of the global population) very wealthy. I come from a developed nation which won't stop me from going to university because of my gender, and if I do experience some level of discrimination in the job market (which I have yet to enter) I am fairly confident that the university I happened to go to might just about make up for that in most instances.

But, nevertheless, language matters. I can never quite shake the feeling that I am slightly too loud, that I speak up too much in class. And sometimes this is true (I concede that it might just be possible that someone else might have a better idea on a subject than me), but equally, there is the fear of being seen as brash, as domineering (and not in the fun way). Being fairly outspoken I often take charge in situations, and often with the agreement of those I am working with, but beneath this there is always the deep-seated fear of being thought of as 'bossy' (as I often was as a child), the fear that this will put people off me, the deep seated knowledge that being seen as 'bossy' is a bad thing.

The problem is, though, that being bossy is something that is overwhelmingly associated with women and girls. If we look at the Google ngrams on 'bossy women' vs 'bossy men' and 'bossy boy' vs 'bossy girl' we see that it is a word that overwhelmingly collocates with the feminine:
Bossy Woman vs Bossy Man

Bossy Boy vs Bossy Girl

Two out of the three examples of the use of 'bossy' provided in the OED entry refer to women. And if we google bossy we are offered this:

Notice the 'tyrannical', 'oppresive' and 'undemocratic'. Bossy is something then that not only is pretty much only something a woman can be, but also something that contradicts some of the fundamental principles on which I base my political identity.

Yet is giving orders and instructions necessarily a bad thing? The ability to give orders, isn't that one of the fundamental characteristics of a good leader? We don't call our boys bossy, why do we call girls it?

The collocation of 'bossy' with 'girl' is fundamentally damaging, it makes us afraid ever to take control, to tell people what to do, even when that might be the best thing for us to do. We train women out of leadership and men into it, while at the same time fostering the other essential skills of leadership in our women and stifling it in men.

Moving on from bossy lets go to the phrase 'man up' often used when boys are being 'overly emotional'. We teach them that emotions make them weak, and expressing them is 'unmanly'. We train them in the skills of leadership (at least the speaking out part) but not to understand and harness their emotions, an essential component of empathy.

Yet, empathy is an essential skill of leadership, without empathy leadership becomes dictatorial, privileging those we can relate to, not to those of whom we have no emotional understanding (Insert jab against the conservatives here).

Words matter because they display attitudes that children internalise and that inhibit them as adults. If we teach girls not to lead but to feel, and boys not to feel but to lead, where are the next great leaders of the world going to come from?

Quote of the Day - 09.03.2014

'She took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat'
Genesis 3:6, King James Version

Our church lent group started today; in a series called 'Growing through Lent' we will be re-examining the various stories which feature in the readings throughout Lent and attempting to bring new and different understandings to them.

Today we (as might be obvious) were looking at the story commonly known in Christian theology as 'The Fall'. We were asked to listen again to the story of the Garden of Eden from the perspective of a particular character in the story (Adam, Eve, Serpent, God), and afterwards we discussed whether this gave us a different view of the story.

What emerged from discussion was a teleological understanding of the Genesis narrative as an explanation for things being the way they are rather than an exposition of original sin (an interpretation I have always preferred... probably the English Lit student coming through, metaphors make everything better).

This got me to thinking of the Garden narrative as a metaphor for the transition of childhood to adulthood. As children we are innocent, as Adam and Eve were in the Garden, carefree and unashamed (come on, we all have those pictures our parents took of us running around the garden in a state of dishabille). As we grow older we learn more, our curiosity drives us to learn more, to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, we learn to be ashamed of our bodies and seek to cover them up, we no longer follow God with the purity of a child's faith. Our knowledge of the world around us, our curiosity leads us away from God* as much as towards God. Women go through puberty at which the pains of childbirth start in our periods, and men have to go out and work (well, we all do now, but when this story was written men went out to work, women ran the home).

Adam and Eve leave the Garden of Eden, an idyllic, childhood utopia where everything they need is provided for them, and must instead struggle to provide for themselves. We leave the protection of our parent's house, to make our own way in the world.

The First Letter to the Corinthians states: 'When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things' (1 Corinthians 13:11), but this so often includes our childlike faith, our unstinting trust in the love and will of God, and it is this we must (as Jesus pointed out) always be seeking to reclaim, despite all the pain and hardships that come with being human.




*SIDE NOTE: A case in the argument for a gender neutral English pronoun... they/them works in most situations but would have confused this one, yet I dislike gendering God as either feminine or masculine.

Quote of the Day - 03.03.2014

'Organised hypocrisy functions as [a] safety valve by which conflicts can be mitigated'
Robert Egnell, 'The organised hypocrisy of international state-building', 2010

Egnell in this article writes about the disconnect in the international aid system between rhetoric, decisions and action. As he points out, in the international community the maintenance of order is more key to success than the success of an operation, and thus it is the appearance of competence rather than the actuality of it that is important.

We see this in things like the focus placed on 'local ownership' within the rhetoric of intervention, coupled with the nature of interventions which often focus on the same aims of democratisation and the introduction of free-market economics. Such changes tend to come with the blithe assumption that local ownership must in part stem first from proper education of the locals.

In suggesting that hypocrisy is not merely an accident of the international system but a tactic of it (whether a conscious or unconscious one) Egnell makes me more nervous about how I want to proceed than I already am. I fervently want to be involved in international development, yet at the same time, wholeheartedly believe in the idea of local ownership as not just an ideal but as a necessity for successful development. This leaves me wondering whether the process I engaged in as an intern in Hackney in 2011 (implemented properly) might be possible on a wider scale if only there was the acceptance from donor countries of a certain lack of control of the process.

Whilst in Hackney I was working for the Contextual Theology Centre as a Jellicoe Intern, engaged in community organising in the local community. The theory was that rather than going in with a specific project, we were to speak to as many local people as possible with the only intention of finding out what they wanted. Looking back now, the process was hijacked somewhat as the vicar of the church I was based in was very keen on pedestrianisation of an area, a highly devisive issue for the shopkeepers of the area who felt it would detract from their sales if buses no longer went past the shops. The key issue in fact was one which neither the church nor the local council really cared about, the problem of Christmas lights. The street had at one point had beautiful Christmas lights, but these went missing one year and the ones that replaced them, the shopkeepers felt, made them the laughing stock of the Borough.

What this process showed me ultimately, was the inherent difficultly of implementing local ownership, those with the power don't want the same things as their constituents. However, had the power-brokers of the area implemented the change the shopkeepers wanted, I cannot help but wonder what difference that would have made to their cooperation on other issues.

I went in without preconceptions as to what would help (or at least as far as possible without an agenda) and listened to what people wanted. This is a time consuming process, and doesn't necessarily lead where you want it to go (the local politicians wanted a smarter, more upmarket high street, not pretty Christmas lights for an area focused on pound shops and betting shops), but arguably, surely, could result in more change in the long term. After all, people are more likely to do what you want them to if you show them you care first.