Battlepanda: liberals should not be racist and sexist

[Originally published on a weblog called “What Is Liberalism?”]

Battlepanda complains about the racist and sexist remarks that are sometimes made by men who are supposedly loyal to such progressive causes as racial and gender equality:

I suppose Mithra’s “point” is that Michelle Malkin’s popularity on the right could only be as some sort of window dressing because being conservative automatically makes you so bigoted in Mithra’s view that you would never take anything a minority woman says seriously otherwise. Yeah. Tokenism. That’s why her site is getting about 80,000 hits a day on average. Can you name a female liberal blogger that gets that kind of traffic? Or a female pundit on par (in terms of popularity) with Malkin, Coulter or Ingraham? I don’t think so. I guess our side respects women so much there’s no need to actually listen to ’em out of tokenism, so we don’t listen to them at all.

In every progressive organization I’ve ever been in, there has been a problem with progressive men thinking that their loyalty to feminist ideals should not be questioned because, you know, their progressive, for christ sakes! Bigotry is what the other side does. And the fight (educating progressive men how to treat women as equals) has to be refought, over and over and over again. It is, partly, a process of education. None of us start life understanding the opposite gender, nor how to properly respect or communicate with the other gender. Whole books have been written about the subtle miscommunications that often crop up between genders. It is something we learn, just as we slowly learn the moral importance of treating others as our equals.

One pattern in the leadership of progressive organizations that I noted over the years is that some of the men who were accussed of sexism, and reacted with the most bitterness, eventually became some of the best models of inclusive leadership. Their education usually took about 2 years. I recall men who were hopeless cases in 1991, who’d become leaders admired by all by 1993. I recall in 1986 women struggling to explain sexism to men who stubbornly did not want to hear what the women had to say, yet by 1988 those same men having come to understand what was said to them 2 years before. I recall a meeting of the Student Environmental Action Coalition (a national student environmental group) grinding to a halt in 1992 because one of the men, who was acting as moderator, routinely skipped over the women in the room and called on other men to speak, and eventually the women in the room called him on it, and the fight which ensued took up the rest of the day. It was a bitter fight, and there were tears and hurt feelings on all sides. I know that by 1994 that same guy was still active with SEAC, and most of the women who worked with him thought he was a fair and inclusive leader.

Of course, some never learn. They tend to drop out of any movement, feeling unloved by those whom, they feel, should show the most loyalty to them. That goes, surely, for women as well as men, for all people who find themselves unable or unwilling to learn how to respect others.

I’m 38 now and I’m seeing these kinds of fights less often. It might be the kind of education that only young men go through, part of the process of learning about the other gender, which of course is one of the most important things we learn during our teens and twenties. I do wonder if there is an age cut-off for this particular kind of political awakening? Do men have to “get it” by the time they are 30, or 35, and if not do they just never get it? And do these arguments have to happen in person? I do think this is one of those things that perhaps can not be learned over the Web. The importance of gender equality is not wholly an intellectual issue. It helps, I think, to be in a room full of women who are:

a.) committed to the same cause you are

b.) intelligent and articulate

c.) able to explain their own need to be respected and valued

We all tend to get involved in progressive causes for at least three reasons:

1.) to support a cause we know is right

2.) to feel solidarity with others

3.) to learn what we personally need to learn (complete ourselves as human beings)

Item #3 is, I think, strongest when we are young. Certainly it was a strong motivation for me when I was in my teens and twenties. I had a sense that I was incomplete as a person, and that involvement with a social movement would allow me to learn the things that I needed to learn. And, of course, I learned many important things that I’m glad I had the chance to learn.

I do think that those people whose involvement with progressive politics is limited to writing on the Web are going to miss out on some crucial learning experiences that might benefit them as people. That is especially true, I think, when it comes to learning sensitivity towards others. Real respect for others is something best learned by directly interacting with others. There are a thousand forms of information that you can read from someone when you are in the room with them that you can not get over the web: the different kinds of pause, the angle a pen is held while someone thinks about what you said, versus the angle of the same pen when someone drifts off into daydreams, the way eyebrows pull together to show concern, or pull apart to show delight, or pull apart to show surprise, or pull apart to ask a question, the different ways people inhale and what it means, the facial expressions of fear, reservation, offendedness, humor, the way eyes lock with eyes, or don’t, the million small gestures of touch, nearly invisible expressions of deferment or dominance, intimacy or dislike, needs, boredom.

I do think that a person who expresses loyalty to progressive politics but who hasn’t learned how to value gender or racial equality is someone who is basically useless to the progressive movement. While I respect the fact that some people simply don’t have the time to get more involved (they’ve kids to raise, they’ve a career to build), I also think they should remember what a limited form of learning reading and writing for the Web is. At the very least, they should make an extra effort to truly hear what is being said to them, and they should try to listen without defensiveness or anger.

Of course, that is an ideal for all of us. We should strive to truly listen to what others say to us, and to hear it without defensiveness or anger.