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Sunday, November 24, 2013

Why we need to quit gendering "success"

Yesterday afternoon, I went to the climbing gym for a quick session. I was working my way up a route near the max of my ability, and exhausted about 3/4 of the way up, half falling, half simply sitting in my harness. Fortunately, I was on top-rope so fell only so far as the rope stretched, as when I looked down in the direction of my belayer, I saw another climber not 10 feet below me, lead climbing on a different route that overlapped with mine and ended on the same anchors. This behavior is a major violation of climbing etiquette - it is dangerous and it is obtrusive - and for a rather nervous climber like myself, it has the especially anxiety-inducing consequence of making me feel that I need to rush through a "project," perhaps forgoing additional attempts at moves I find challenging. I jumped back on the route, climbed until I fell again one move from the top, and when I saw that the man was still climbing just behind me, I asked to be lowered. My partner and I exchanged exasperated looks with neighboring climbers, but didn't say anything to the offending pair. We waited for them to apologize. They never did, and in fact they engaged in a number of other rude violations of climbing etiquette while there, including leaving a lead rope unattended on a route after they finished climbing it. This occupied the route so that, although they were no longer climbing it, others could not.

Perhaps because I had just returned from the American Anthropological Association's annual meeting where I elected to prioritize feminist panels over those that were drug related, I was really angered by this encounter. Contrary to popular advice or wisdom or whatever, however, I was not angered at my own silence. Rather, I was bothered by the two men's oblivion, by their unwillingness to just look about and consider how their actions were affecting the people around them.

The thing is, there have been countless lists floating around the internet lately that highlight the traits of "successful" people and telling women how they need to change in order to be more "successful" themselves. [I've put the term successful in quotes here as it is a problematic concept in and of itself and these articles consistently refer to very cultured and arguably gendered notions of success - financial, material, work-related, etc.] There is even a recent blog post I came across that urges women in academia to practice engaging in assertive or confident, rather than submissive, body language and to learn to take up (demand) more space for themselves.

In many societies, including the US, dominance is associated with masculinity while the act of submission and traits/behaviors associated with submissiveness are viewed as feminine. This gendering of (preferred vs. undesirable) behaviors manifests at multiple levels of society and reifies the relative status of men and women. It shapes gender, contributing to a strictly binary vision of the construct. Thus, how men and women are taught to act and interact from a young age and specific character traits in turn correspond with the hierarchical categorization of gender across society.

Now, as a relatively submissive person (by nature and probably also via my upbringing and culture), I am certainly grateful for the lessons that have taught me to be more assertive, to be more straightforward and open about my needs and desires. My concern with all this discourse encouraging women to adopt traits associated with normative masculinity and abandon those associated with normative femininity comes when I envision a world in which everybody is demanding that the soft-spoke person across the table speak louder. What I don't understand is why the conversation seems to exclude a request that the soft-spoken person's table-mate listen harder. Why don't we, as a society, ask the person who is taking up more than his/her "share" of space to look around and consider whether and how this is affecting others? Why does it seem that the pressure to change is primarily placed upon those who strive to be less demanding to become more so? Why can't thinking of how one's actions affect others be seen as confident and competent? (Arguably, this is where the reification of the gender/submission association has its greatest impact.)

It makes me think of this interview I heard last summer with Daniel Suelo, who has spent the last nearly 15 years living "without money." While he does depend upon generosity and publicly funded resources for many things, he has managed to survive and thrive for all these years without himself directly engaging the cash economy. And he has apparently been largely criticized for it, with a major and common critique being that what he's doing isn't sustainable for the whole society. In the interview, he noted that odds are, in a society as large as our current one, this is true. His way of life is largely dependent upon those who do participate in the cash economy. But he turns this question back on his critics and wonders why these same people fail to recognize that, at the end of the day, the excessive consumerism valorized in American culture is far less sustainable on a global scale.

Ultimately, we need to consider what type of society we want to live in. Is it one in which every person fights for the limited space on the couch or is it one in which every person makes him or herself so small as to take up less than a cushion? It's probably neither. We need people who are acting in the best interest of themselves and in the best interest of others. We need people capable of balancing being relational with assertive about their own ideas. I'm not proposing an end to the call for submissive women (and men) to step up and make their voices heard, to take up their share of space, or to confidently share their ideas. Rather, I'm arguing that we need an equal call for those who are more dominant in nature to look around before taking up so much space, to try listening harder before asking a companion to speak up, and to consider the good of the group in addition to any benefit to themselves. To truly (re)value these various traits in a more equitable manner we will have to de-gender the traits themselves or acknowledge and rectify persistent gender inequalities. Looks like it's back to feminism 101.