one thing

(my teaching "blog")

When the metoo hashtag started spreading, my initial reaction was, “oh shit, this is on point and really appropriately uncomfortable for men,” instantly followed by, "nothing will come of this."  This was right around when I first heard the Zeynep Tufekci TED Radio Hour, about the paradoxically self-defeating nature of social media based movements, and it helped me justify inaction.  And even though I am writing this and pushing back on the preceding emotion, a majority of me still believes it is futile to try.

So for me, the first #metoo I saw was a woman I used to date, and it wasn’t contextualized, so when I learned what it meant the next morning I reconsidered it, and thought “what a brave move” but I had already known since we, you know, talked about shit, so it wasn’t really a shock.

Then more flooded in, and my reaction was “well, this is a good thing to be happening and still doesn’t come as a shock to me; I like to imagine I’m a feminist, and enough of my female friends have shared being sexually assaulted that I understood the magnitude of the problem, even if I couldn’t process it (sort of how I understand that our galaxy has 200,000,000 stars). But, like all internet conceived movements, it is destined to die, because it is not tied to physical action, and it is only circulating in the echo chambers."  

Using a random best guess, what like 90% of men have committed something that constitutes sexual assault?  Many likely regret it, but the lion’s share, I have to believe, are committed by repeat offenders who don’t even acknowledge that their behavior is problematic.  I say this not to suggest “not all men” but because these people are likely not inside of the #metoo social media echo chamber, and so to highlight the futility of this effort because so many offenders are either never going to see this social movement, or quite frankly aren’t going to care. 

Okay so then a couple more posts came up, which finally got me to contribute to an online political conversation for the first time.
First, a male friend posts:

The response on thefacebook was largely positive, and I thought, well this is a good step and it is on point with many self reflective men's past experiences, but really he is describing sexual harassment, not admitting he has assaulted or raped someone, and I have my doubts that anyone ever will come out and admit that.  He is right that it will never be a trending hashtag.  The ubiquity of the experience I am seeing women share includes this sort of problem behavior, but is far more extensive and disturbing.  His next post was

Now, I added this for the juxtaposition, but I actually think there is something positive to be said for being willing to engage in political advocacy and also do normal everyday b-side comedy routines.  Whether you come from a lens of privilege or you live with an inequitable reality every day, we are all complex real people and more than the inequities we face, so I like the idea that he or anyone could post about more than just politics.  Upon re-reading, this is sort of just a non-sequitur. 

The next event I encountered was the most graphic and visceral of the #metoo posts I saw:

If this doesn’t incense you, you’re probably one of the millions of people who will likely never read this, and never care- aka the fundamental problem both with sexual assault and with social media movements.

I wanted to reach out to this person, and I wanted to say:

“I hear this and I understand it is fucked up.  I want to do something, and consider myself an ally.  I can and do stand in solidarity, and encourage men to have conversations in the open and to check their behavior when I see it, but this is too small a step.  The rate of return is too low, and we don’t have 600 years to see this change happen.  It needs to happen now.  Please tell me what I can do, how I can help.”

But this is problematic for many reasons. 

1) it is genuinely hard to do- it is uncomfortable, which is a root issue here, of course.

2) it puts the impetus on women to tell men how to fix the problem.  Also, why in the world should they even know the answer to this?

3) if I were a woman getting that message I might think “sharing a story like this is hard enough, step off.”

That last one is more subjective I suppose.  But again, from my perspective, is part of #1 for men, that it is hard, because I don’t know how another person may react and thus don't want to risk it.

Okay the next thing that happens is a third friend reposts this:

I’m not tech savvy enough to know how to do the crediting bit (I can try to hyperlink it) but it is worth reading.  Her post had a lot of good ideas, but as I read it I kept thinking, yes try I do these things already.  I read Rebecca Solnit (who incidentally has a lot to teach me about being a feminist, writing beautiful prose, all while embodying a diverse and multifaceted array of interests mentioned above); I buy science toys for my little female cousin, and will also for my niece to-be.  

2 of them gave me pause:

Yeah I don’t really do this very often, but I should.

Have I done this?  I wasn’t on the lookout for it, so it is nearly impossible to say, after the fact.  I hope not, but genuinely maybe, if not probably.  Well fuck.

Okay, but really the takeaway that I had from reading this was that yes, this was a thoughtful and solid list, but the audience it hits is the audience who is willing and interested in change, and the suggestions it gives are essentially to change people one at a time.  One at a time needs to happen, sure, but what makes

stop?  It is not enough that I would not remain silent, or that I work to be that same influence on men I know and students I teach.  It just isn’t enough.

Er, conclusion?:

I hate when things I read bring up complex issues and have literally no constructive solution.  If you’re still reading, this is one of those.

But I think maybe the answer lies where I started, with Zeynep Tufekci.  Labor rights, women’s lib, civil rights, Stonewall, the successful movements of the last century happened without social media, and they happened both with painstaking legwork as well as emotion fueled catalysts, but their success is unified in that people were deliberately pre-organized, with human relationships at the center (oh for sure also see Solnit on this).  Someone is doing that work right now.  But it is hard to know who.  Social media is the tool, but a viral hashtag is not the answer, we need organization.

And this is true of everything all of the social media-borne social causes.

I have never contributed to a political movement on social media because it feels inherently frivolous.  I probably won’t again because it still does even as I write.  This may seem like a statement of privilege, and I can see that it is in some ways.  But at the same time not all people of color, and not all women need to post on social media as their form of activism, so it not incumbent that forward thinking people with privilege need to contribute to social media as their medium.  And I want to contribute more, only somewhere else.

Okay I have an idea.  Again, after this post I’m stepping away from social media, and I am encouraging you to also.  To me, that doesn’t mean not to use it, but it means it should be part of a strategy.  The Keystone/Dakota pipeline protests feel like a good example of this.  Whether they succeed or not, the movement uses social media as a tool, not as the basis or nerve center.

I have a thing I’ve been meaning to do, and I’m going to do it in the next three weeks.  Feel free to message me privately or ask me in real life if I get it done, to hold me accountable.

That’s where I’ll start.