East Coast Roadshow: Reflections on Privilege

Privilege.

I have it, and it came to the fore whenever I found myself comfortably wandering around the streets of a strange city, taking random photos, and not cross thinking about the various police patrols that wandered past me during the day (that I notice the police patrols, security cameras, and have one eye on the interaction of law enforcement with the rest of the world is something learnt, and that I can stop to observe police interactions with relative invisibility is also a privilege).

Similarly, the sheer number of stairs I’ve encountered in the last five weeks has been eye opening in terms of thinking how the architecture skews towards the temporary able bodied status in sublime ways (and overt ways).  Nothing like realising that the “accessibility ramp” is tucked away to the side of the building with the darkened overhang, garbage bins, and poor lighting to realise that this might be letter of the law, but sure isn’t spirit or the intent of accessibility.

One of the things that I have come to really appreciate about learning my trade as a feminist ally has been the liberation that feminism has provided to me from some of the cultural aspects of masculinity that I still have to struggle to overcome because they’re quite ingrained in me.  A couple of things spring to mind – eye contact being one of the most amazing differences in the way that wresting myself free from the “All interactions with women need some sexualised content for me to feel comfortable with my heteronormative role” (my words).  Being able to look people in the eye and not at their breasts is actually something that you’re not aware of how much of a difference it makes to the way you view women as equals until you realise that you’d previously had a mental categorisation of “people you talk to” and “breasts  you’ve spoken at”. That whole thing with “My eyes are up here” is also a denial of eye contact that allows a guy (he said, speaking from experience) to depersonalise (and ‘other’) the woman in the conversation by refusing to acknowledge them through eye contact.(1,2)

The second liberating factor was a recent article skimmed in the GoogleReader that was discussing gender assumptions in the service industries, and the fact that a smile from the person working behind the counter was just that – a smile, and possibly just a forced part of their day job.  Again, from what I used to think, and what I had been taught to extract from the mental processes associated with the friendly interaction with a female service staff member was massively sexualised.  So once again, it was pleasant to be able to talk to the person on reception, smile, chat, and walk away with no more than a sense of “Hey, room keys. Where’s the lift?”.  No added layers of non-existent subtext and assumption to create lingering doubts of “I totally could have scored with her”, and no sense of obligation to be a sleaze.  Goddamn it was nice to go through a service encounter and walk out at the end without the baggage of male societal processing (and yes, I’m aware of the background tasks of patriarchy running with empty data. If I hadn’t had the code inserted in my mind, I couldn’t notice it running empty).

The trip to Wollongong seemed to have upped my awareness of these facets of my life moreso than any other part of the Roadshow. I had two days of really noticing how much more pleasant the world is when I get to treat the people in the world around me as my equal. Again, when I was interviewing four female academics (three PhD students, and a professor), the liberation from the assumptions of sexualisation let me hear their words without a the klaxon bell of “HEY! SEXUALISE THIS MOMENT” going off in my head (3). For that, I thank the opportunity that the feminist blogs I read have given me to shut up, sit back, listen, learn, read and observe, and to know that it’s okay for me (privileged male) to not need to turn their conversations to being about my experiences in order to derail their activity to make it all about my experience.

That sense of liberation from not needing to speak, to be central, to assume, to think a friendly smile is something more makes my world that little bit easier to navigate, and a lot more comfortable to just have conversation without social obligation to be an asshole.

(1) Annoying, one unfortunate habit I have with eye contact is dropping my gaze to my hands when I’m explaining something complex – I’m starting to think it’s that I’m used to typing carefully when explaining complex thoughts in my work, so I look at my keyboard to see the hands are hitting the correct keys – and I do that when I’m talking now.  This occasionally has me looking back up from my hands and thinking “Uh, where did I look like I was looking?”. I’m trying to be much more aware of that as it’s happening rather than post facto.

(2) Eye contact is also contextually based – not making eye contact as a sign of respect for the people who aren’t comfortable with direct eye contact overwrites any desire for direct eye contact.

(3) The period spent shift from the sexualised view of the world to a massively more desexualised one did come complete with moments of  me thinking “hey, uh, am I supposed to be doing something here?”