On the Precipice

I can’t help but feel like we are in the middle of a moment.

This feeling is the culmination of scrolling through what felt like an endless stream of “#metoo’s, watching celebrity after celebrity walk down the red carpet in black at the Golden Globes, and listening as survivor after survivor stood up in a courtroom and addressed their abuser, Larry Nassar. It is Time’s “Person of the Year,” Oprah bringing tears to my eyes as I watched her Golden Globes speech while riding BART, and Halsey’s spoken word at the Women’s March bringing the tears back in a coffee shop this week. I am inspired, but I am wary. A “moment” is connected to a long history and an uncertain future. It seems as though we are on the precipice of something significant, but, by nature, being on the edge of something implies precariousness and fragility.

The fragility is palpable because the stakes are so high. We are assigned a role in this power dynamic before we are born and are socialized as part of the dominant or subordinate group from day one. Members of the dominant group, in this case men, are the manifestation of power. According to Tatum (2000), “dominant groups, by definition, set the parameters within which the subordinates operate”(p. 11). As women, we learn to exist within these parameters, partially out of fear and partially because, “inequitable social relations are seen as the model for ‘normal human relationships”(Tatum, 2000, p. 12) Saturday Night Live’s, “Welcome To Hell” parody touches on this normalization as the women of SNL, joined by Saoirse Ronan sing, “Now House of Cards is ruined/And that really sucks/Well, here’s a list of stuff that’s ruined for us/Parking/And walking/And Uber/And ponytails/Bathrobes/And nighttime/And drinking/And hotels/And vans”.

The lyrics are hilarious and shocking at the same time, and that’s essential to the work of humor and currency. Abusers and oppressors are inextricably bound in the exercise of power. They walk hand in hand, enabling each other through the pervasiveness and self-perpetuation of dominance. They prey on the “invisibility” of the “other” and it is ignorance that allows for invisibility. The privilege of ignorance allows for awareness to be avoided and wrong-doings to be rationalized. We see this in the slew of public apology letters written by perpetrators.

`Equally unsettling in many ways are the men who just don’t seem to understand women’s day to day experiences. They are shocked by the ubiquitous nature of harassment. SNL’s “Welcome To Hell” hilariously confronts this ignorance with lyrics such as:

All these big, cool, powerful guys are turning out to be, what’s the word?

Habitual predators?… /And it’s, like, dang, is this the world now?/But here’s a little

secret that every girl knows/Oh, this been the damn world!

So now that it’s out there, in the media, at our award shows, on our news feeds, nearly impossible to ignore, we find ourselves on this precipice of something that feels major, so why am I wary? Because for true change and progress to be made, we must work with our oppressor. Harro states, “if we try this alone, or without organization, we may be kicked back down to our powerless positions.” Because, as Harro puts it, “agents may decide to use [their] power and privilege to try to make change… If [their] motivation is guilt, [they] are doomed to fail.” In this particular moment, we observe men, struggling to “see” the subordinate, trying to manage guilt relating to power.

I worry that the change we see will be ineffectual and inauthentic if efforts by the dominant group to support societal change (in relation to sexual harassment and abuse) come from a place of fear and guilt rather than morally-sound and genuine desire for change. Will there be backlash from the dominant in order to protect their dominance, perhaps making things worse eventually? Will they go back to the status quo, backed by centuries of institutionalized sexism, gender norms, and socialization? Will working women lose their seat at the table, so to speak, when men pay lip-service but return to greater exclusivity as a rebuke? Women have banded together, bolstered by a sense of belonging that makes the “invisible” feel seen and powerful, but power cannot simply be taken. We need to be able to count on the patriarchy that has kept us down to lift us up and stand with us on this precipice.

References

Halsey Women’s March Poem, https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/22/us/halsey-womens-march

poem-speech-trnd/index.html

Harro, Bobbie. (198) Cycle of Socialization, (6)New York, NY: Routledge:

Oprah Golden Globes Speech, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fN5HV79_8B8

Saturday Night Live, “Welcome To Hell”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1l26UFQ06eQ

Statement from Harvey Weinstein,

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/10/05/us/statement-from-harveyweinstein.html

Tatum, B. D. (2000). The complexity of identity: “Who am I?”. In Adams, M.,

Blumenfield, W. J., Castaneda, R., Hackman, H. W., Peters, M. L., & Zuniga, Ximena

(Eds.), Readings for Diversity and Social Justice: An Anthology on Racism,

Antisemitism, Sexism, Heterosexism,Ableism, and Classism (pp. 9-14). New York:

Routledge.