Director’s Blog – Lisa Charlotte Davis
We exist to challenge stereotypes around gender norms & relationship behaviours. But we never want to take a confrontational tone in this.
Why?
Put simply, we live in a very shouty age! There are a lot of binaries: you’re for or against; anti or pro. And a lot of angry defensiveness from folk feeling attacked by “the other side.” It’s not very conducive to nuance & the empathy we need to understand each other (& ourselves).
So we walk a careful, non-confrontational line.
But it’s tricky. Because a lot of what we invite people to think about IS confronting. It’s uncomfortable to have our world view challenged; to realise we may have prejudicial attitudes or behave in exclusionary ways.
When I came across this extract from Professor Keon West‘s book – The Science of Racism – it struck me how well his points could be mapped onto gender, e.g. the idea that many people don’t believe racism (or sexism) exists or that “reverse racism” (or misandry) is now more prevalent.
I found it fascinating that “almost nobody thinks of themselves as a racist person” despite empirical evidence of discriminatory treatment across hiring practices, medical-patient referrals & teacher assessment of student work.
Keon asks how we can square these findings & presents a useful analysis of the way some of our anti-racist constructs fail to work. For example, research suggests that framing bias as “unconscious” makes people care less about it, as if it allows us to protect “our own perceptions of innocence.”
The problem is the resulting lack of accountability. It’s like a get out of jail free card. I’m not aware of my bias so I’m not guilty.
Flipping this back to gender, I remember being astounded by the gulf in male-female sexual assault prevalence perceptions in Ofsted’s Review of Sexual Abuse in Schools: where 79% of girls think it happens “a lot” or “sometimes” between people their age, versus only 38% of boys. This was borne out in our Weaving Stories project, where the boys couldn’t believe girls were stared at in public by adult men in ways that made them feel uncomfortable, whilst the girls were very clear this was a common experience.
The bottom line – we don’t notice the things that don’t happen to us.
But is it constructive if we frame things in a way that leaves people feeling guilty for their biases?
This is the line that we walk!
So one of our key challenges is to help people get to a place of feeling prepared to embrace their accountability.
We love this comment from a parent –
“[I wish I could] go back & give myself a slap.”
And these words from a survivor –
“Remember… I am still a child… I’m just learning & obviously I’ve made a mistake”
We’re all always learning & we all make mistakes. Grown ups too.
How can we own them?
Image credit: Tom Kindley & Sheryl Jenkins
