Defending my stance

It's been well over a year since this blog has been updated, but I got struck with inspiration this week and needed to get my ideas out.

The election is a little over two weeks away, and the divide between our two most vocal and prominent political factions seems to grow each day. I feel this at home, where my mother and I are on complete opposite sides of the opinion spectrum on nearly every issue. This evokes a lot of emotions for me: frustration, confusion, disappointment. But it also led me to ask myself, "How would I explain my position if I had to?" Often, I fall back on women's reproductive issues, gay marriage, and other social issues. But my mom is a small business owner, so I feel the need to explain my position from a fiscal standpoint too.

I am not an economist. I am not "business-savvy," "money-minded," or entrepreneurial. Nor am I familiar with tax-related legislature of any kind. I am, I would assume, just as ignorant about complex economic issues as the average American. Don't be offended by that statement; if you are knowledgeable in any way, I commend you and I consider you to be above average.

But there is one phrase that I can lock onto: "redistribution of wealth." This seems to really fire up conservatives. To an extent, I agree with some of their claims. Redistribution of wealth is unfair. It is limiting to those at the top. It does have the potential to sap one's ambition to succeed. I can see all of those points. But redistribution of wealth is also what's best for our country.

The United States of America is not seen by others (including the thousands of immigrants who clamor to arrive here) as the Land of Opportunity because a few people can afford to own private jets. It's because nearly everyone here can afford to eat meat three times a day. Some people may emigrate here in the hopes of becoming a millionaire, but most people emigrate here in the hopes of having a comfortable, secure home, access to education and healthcare, and some creature comforts that seem like bare necessities to many Americans (perhaps a car, or indoor climate control, or the ability to take a small vacation, or hot water from the tap).

I know I'm generalizing here. Bear with me. My point is that the American Dream is the lure of middle-class living, not millionaire excess.

People who get really angry at the concept of wealth redistribution seem to want to have it both ways. They want to have their cake and eat it too. They want to personally benefit, without limit, from their hard work, but they also want the country to somehow benefit too.

Let's say a family is stranded on a desert island. One person in that family is good enough at hunting to kill a boar. The others aren't fast enough or strong enough. And that one person doesn't want to share her food with the others because, well, that's not fair. But she also doesn't want her family to die of starvation. She wants the rest of her family to simply get good enough at hunting to fend for themselves. That way, they can all survive, and it still happened fairly. Without breaking the rules. Without giving anyone what they didn't earn.

Now, redistribution of wealth isn't about life or death (OR IS IT??), but this is the analogy that seems to work best for me. Wealthy Americans who are doing well for themselves want to keep their profits, but they also want to keep America at the top. But America stays at the top because of how well everyone is doing, not how well a few people are doing. And for many, many reasons, everyone can't make it all by themselves. And regardless of those reasons--regardless of whether they opted to be unambitious, or they just had some bad luck, or they made foolish choices, or they were unexpectedly saddled with caring for someone else--is it worth it to keep all our resources separated, even for people who have a lot to spare, and allow America as a whole to founder, all in the name of fairness and capitalism?

I think that "redistribution of privilege" has the same problem. People believe in leveling the playing field in theory, but not giving up their edge in the college admissions process or the job market in reality. But that's another post for another day.

I'm sure that my ideas have a lot of holes in them. For example, they seem to stray toward socialism/communism, and I'm not smart enough to explain how wealth redistribution is a safe distance from socialism. But it seems like those opposed to redistribution are opposed on the basis of certain principles (fairness, bootstrapping), without proper regard to realistic consequences.

Readers, please educate me. Tell me what you think, explain the deeper issues, oppose my arguments.

*This post assumes that 1)everyone thinks America is "on top" and 2) being on top is a good thing for everyone. I know those premises are not given by all. Again, another post for another day.

Held Hostage to Gender Norms

For this entry to make sense, you have to read this article on raising a genderless child first. It's about raising the child without external cues of his/her own gender, not about raising a child with a biologically ambiguous gender. It's posted on my FB so some of you have probably already read it.

I also suspect that some friends who read it from my page were so outraged or disturbed by the premise that they didn't even bother to comment with their disagreement. It seems like a polarizing idea. Kevin, my co-blogger here, voiced his vehement disagreement with what these parents are doing to their children. I am going to defend it here (at least, why I think it's a deeply loving intention, if not a practical or effective one).

So, these parents want to raise their youngest child without outward cues to his/her gender. They haven't told anyone that it's a girl or a boy. The child's name is Storm, and Storm's clothing, grooming, and toys are not gender-bound. I think the question that comes to mind is, "Why would you conduct this gender experiment on your own child, not knowing what sort of identity-related or social harm could come to him/her as a result, when you should just get over yourselves and allow the child to learn his/her gender in the conventional, usual way?" And I think there is an underlying assumption that the vast majority of children socialized typically are well-adjusted in their gender. Sure, there may be an occasional guy who has to defend his cheerleading or girl who has to prove her technological prowess, but overall these are healthy people.

But that's the flaw. I think this is an erroneous assumption. The usual way is NOT harmless. I will use myself as an example, because that's the only thing I'm an expert at. I'm female, and was raised as such, but I don't remember much pressure to conform to that role too terribly. I played soccer in 1st grade, refused to join Girl Scouts because I didn't want to "sell cookies" while boys were off starting fires, wore pants all the time, was forbidden to wear makeup until high school (and even then, it was restricted to really neutral colors), and hated New Kids on the Block (like, a LOT). I don't remember my parents ever saying things to me about my gender and what would be best according to it, in any area of my life. Neither my mom or my dad has ever wistfully daydreamed aloud or dropped hints to me about getting married or having kids.

And yet, as neutral and supportive as my upbringing was, as proud as I feel to have both masculine and feminine traits, I still bear some ugly marks of internalized sexism. I GOT THE MESSAGE, even though no one was saying it to me explicitly. I LIVE THE MESSAGE, even though I don't rationally consider it valid.

Example: I wear high heels. Not all the time, and not super-ridiculous ones (usually). But I do enjoy wearing pretty, interesting high heels. I probably wouldn't think of going to a wedding or a nightclub wearing flats. Why? Oh, high heels are sexy. To whom? I have a boyfriend; why am I trying to look sexy? Because for women, looking sexy is considered a virtue--something that can get you anything from better treatment by strangers to free tires (just ask Sam, my clasmate). Well, they're also fashionable. Who defined fashion and why do I give a shit? I'd probably hate those people if I knew them! Or maybe they give me confidence. Again, why would shoes that squeeze my feet and increase the difficulty of walking (I mean, I can do it but I wouldn't do a 5K in heels) lend me extra confidence?

The point I'm making is, we are not as well-adjusted about gender as we think we are. The damage is there, but it's invisible. We're used to it. Sometimes I think about rejecting all these gender norms: I'll quit wearing makeup, stop doing my hair (which I do hate to do), and let my eyebrows get scraggly. But in the end, I just don't want to give these things up--not because I like them so much, but because I know that they give me a social currency that I'm afraid to go without. Ironically, I am far from the super-feminine ideal, but even I struggle with relinquishing a strong feminine identity, even if it means I am presenting myself to the world more as an individual and less as a generic female.

And it's not just physical appearance. There are things I learned from the media or society about how to talk to a man, how to act on a date, what guys like, what you can do that will earn cool points with guys. I am still trying to undo that damage. In fact, I have some habits and routines that I picked up so long ago (i.e. in childhood) that I have no idea whether I actually prefer them or not, because I've basically brainwashed myself into thinking they are good. Those parts of my identity are permanently gone. Even when I try to re-evaluate them, I know that I'm biased from a lifetime of wanting the approval of society and strategizing to obtain it.

This hasn't been devastating in a dramatic way to my psyche. Obviously, I get along fine and I have been able to undo some of the gender programming that I picked up throughout my life. And indeed, some of that programming makes society flow more smoothly and gives people direction when they are confused. But I think it's faulty to assume that being raised with a prescribed gender role is essentially harmless, and being raised without one is dangerous. There is plenty of harm (and perhaps plenty of good) in receiving strong gender messages from birth onward. When we are socialized so early to our gender, we are sent down a path that becomes more and more treacherous; it becomes less about Barbies and Hot Wheels, and more about drowning out your own voice in favor of the voices of others, which sets the stage for self-rejection and self-doubt. I think these parents are hoping to avoid *some* of that harm. Whether their alternative is detrimental to Storm by some other fashion, I don't know. But I don't think their reasoning is as wacky as it might seem on the surface.

And now, Kevin will offer a rebuttal. (At least, that's what I'm hoping he'll do after reading this.)

On arguing with fence posts

In my last post, I explained why rational argumentation is often ineffective and may sometimes backfire. The gist of my argument against rational arguments is that people do not approach their religious and political beliefs from a position of rational neutrality. Rather, these belief systems are fundamentally rooted in our social identities, and they are buffered against contradictory evidence by numerous cognitive processes.

But does this mean that rational argumentation is never worthwhile? Should we tolerate ideas and policies that appear to us as absurd, irrational, or destructive simply because they are part of someone’s culture? Is the only alternative to cower in a state of impotent, politically correct accommodationism? No, no, and no. This post will outline a middle-of-the-road alternative to confrontation and passivity.

1. Be affirming – We too often assume that people disagree with us because they are ignorant, complacent, or just plain immoral. This is rarely the case. People have very good reasons for believing what they believe, since beliefs are nothing less than adaptations to experience. Since we are not experts on another person’s experience, we cannot be experts on their personal beliefs. Most pro-lifers are not against abortion because they thought, “The Bible says that an embryo is a fully living human being, so abortion is wrong.” Rather, you can bet their beliefs about abortion were framed around previous experience, e.g. feeling sadness for a relative who fell into a deep depression following her abortion or enduring humiliating criticism from a parent when doubting the future of her own pregnancy. There is a history behind beliefs, and that history rarely includes a systematic analysis of "empirical evidence." Finally, never, ever use the word “irrational.” It only communicates your sense of moral superiority and serves to alienate your opponent.

2. Be subtle – The New Atheist approach of “your belief is wrong, and here’s why” will almost certainly fail with most believers of any faith, political or religious. In order to tackle a morally offensive belief – say, bigoted policies against immigrants in Arizona – we need to be less direct in our criticism. For example, when confronting harsh laws against immigrants and minorities, rather than trying to convince people that all Americans descended from immigrants or that their views sound eerily similar to the Ku Klux Klan, we could appeal to their compassionate side by emphasizing the financial burden of immigrants, their need to provide for their families, or at the very least our obligation to protect minorities who are actually citizens of our country from discrimination or unfair treatment. And again, be ready to abandon your endless citations of “empirical evidence,” because more often than not, it’s a tactic that will convince only scientists, and even then it’s a crapshoot.

3. Be perceptive – Listen for the subtext of a person’s beliefs – people are often saying more than what they communicate verbally. I mentioned earlier that beliefs are adaptations to experience, i.e. they serve a purpose beyond logical coherence. These experiential reasons are far more persuasive than so-called rational arguments about concepts and abstractions because they are connected to a person’s strategies for maintaining his relatedness to others, negotiating conflict, understanding his place in the world, etc. We cannot sacrifice these functions so long as we are human, so we need to frame our arguments in a way that allows our opponents to discard their beliefs while also acknowledging the purpose that belief previously fulfilled. For example, someone who is compelled to believe in the literal truth of the Bible because his religious community ostracizes anyone who believes otherwise will never listen to your litany of Biblical contradictions. He will choose community over logic every time, guaranteed.

4. Be diplomatic – When you reach an impasse, accept that you are not the expert on the topic in question, communicate that acceptance, and defer any further discussion to someone who your opponent would be more likely to trust. There are plenty of Christians who believe in evolution and plenty of conservatives who are against imperialistic warfare, and these culturally similar individuals are far more likely to persuade people who are both skeptical of your beliefs and acutely aware of your different sociocultural background. It’s unfortunate that tribal identities and us-and-them thinking are such a central part of human psychology, but if we hope to navigate the obstacles to collaborative discussion, we’ll have to start with people at their most primitive.

5. Be vulnerable – We need to communicate the human side of our beliefs by including examples from our own experience. If you meet someone who believes that atheists are amoral baby-eaters, offer to share your approach to ethics. Be sure to include some of the errors you’ve made over the years, and explain how you’ve struggled through sticky ethical questions that may not have had a clear answer. People need to believe that an alternative to their current belief system is possible, and they can only do so if you do not present yourself as a hyper-rational, emotionally-detached robot who has never suffered, failed, or fallen short of his ideals. They need to know, in essence, that you are human, not simply an expert on humanity.

This is only a rough sketch of ways we can make our dialogue more effective. I hope they’re enough to convince you that we can persuade people without alienating them or sacrificing our own values, but I’d also love for you to challenge me to defend them. I never turn down a good argument.

A rational argument against rational arguments

Listen up, my fellow champions of science, reason, and secular values: we’re doing it all wrong. That’s right, put down your copy of Why I Am Not a Christian and stop channeling your inner Hitchens, because it’s time we take an honest look at our tactics.

We thought we were doing our part to encourage rational thought and fight ignorance, superstition, and prejudice. The task was simple enough: present theists with scientific evidence against their supernatural claims, and their silly beliefs will evaporate like vampires in the sun. Show conservatives that their policies are unequivocally destroying our society, and they will collapse under the weight of reason. Beat them over the head with enough facts, figures, publications, graphs, statistics, and eye-opening documentaries, and eventually they’ll see the Truth.

It sounds reasonable enough, so why are they not convinced? Have they not received enough knowledge? Are they hopelessly ignorant? Gullible? Mentally impaired? Here’s a hint: replace “knowledge” with “grace” and exchange “ignorant” for “evil,” and you’ll begin to understand how backward our approach has been – we’ve become evangelists.

It turns out that all the debating and fact-checking and confrontation have done more damage than the anti-science/anti-secularism camp could have done in a generation. We’ve set up another religious dichotomy between the faithful and the fallen and appointed ourselves as the arbiters of all that is good, honest, and reasonable. The New Atheists are actually the New Priesthood, and we’re destroying our reputation as swiftly as crusaders in the Middle East.

But I can already hear the guttural cries of “Heresy!” I know what you’re thinking: Don’t you believe that science is the one true path to understanding the natural world? Of course I do. My criticism is not directed our message itself but rather at our style of communication and how we interact with people who disagree with us. It’s about process, not content.

If we ever hope to persuade other people that religion does not belong in the science classroom, that government is about protection rather than control, and that non-theists deserve their freedom from religious influence, we need to understand that we are having conversations with people and not with ideas. People will never react positively to ridicule, sanctimony, or public humiliation. They don’t like it when you ask them to discard their sense of identity or the culture that was handed down to them by people whom they love and respect. And they really hate the word “irrational.”

I know, I know. You are the kind of person who is invariably  calm and respectful, and you even have a few friends who are conservative/religious/superstitious. But – here’s some more bad news – even if we restrict ourselves to a civil debate and refrain from alienating our opponents, we have at best made them a little less likely to believe that atheists eat babies, as commendable as that is. The real problem is not just that we are often abrasive and dogmatic but that we have been ignoring some very basic principles of human psychology.

People will never be as rational as we expect them to be because they do not structure their thoughts and behavior according to formal logic. Our beliefs and thought processes are largely unconscious, automatic, and determined by multiple, often conflicting motives. In other words, we often don’t know what’s going on in our heads, and consequently, our thoughts, feelings, and beliefs are usually beyond our control.

Take some of the findings from cognitive science, for instance. The principle of cognitive dissonance explains why people find evidence that contradicts their existing beliefs to be highly aversive. When we are confronted with two conflicting beliefs, we are more likely to rationalize the position we already hold or discredit the opposing one. Another principle, the backfire effect, takes this resistance a step further: people actually become more certain of their beliefs when they are directly confronted with disconfirmatory evidence. And an emerging field of study called Terror Management Theory describes our tendency to entrench ourselves in our respective systems of belief and our group identities during periods of stress.

You'll notice that I've used words like "identity" and "culture" to discuss public attitudes toward ostensibly objective facts. Am I, as many New Atheists would claim, "accommodating" their backward views by providing them with an excuse to be irrational? In other words, is it okay to believe patently stupid things simply because everyone else in your social group believes them? The answer is no on both counts, although there is a grain of truth to their concerns: I am asking my fellow atheists, agnostics, freethinkers, and secular humanists to consider the human factors behind the beliefs. These beliefs are inextricably linked to our needs for identity, community, and meaning. That is why rational argument is insufficient as a means of changing them.

This is just a sample of scientific justifications for a new approach to our disagreements. If we want our conversations to end with “Wow, you’ve really given me something to think about,” rather than “That’s just what I believe,” we need to make our tactics more consistent with the findings of psychological science. In a later post, I’ll talk about a few ways we can make our arguments more persuasive.

So what does "queer" mean anyway?

I feel less ambiguity about the topics of gender and sexuality than I do about the topics of race and ethnicity. I think it's because I grew up hearing (or noticing) fewer messages about gender than I did about race. I felt less pull from others to be complicit in their homophobia than in their racism. Still, sexuality is a big interest of mine, and I do want to ponder sex and gender as they come up (haha).

Well, now is as good a time as any: my friend posted a blog entry about her queer identity a couple of weeks ago, and apparently it's getting some circulation. I just now read it and would love to add her voice to the (meager) discussion here. Check out her post and see what sort of reactions it inspires in you.

At some point I will get back to telling stories and sharing thoughts of my own, but for now I'm happy to share other people's thoughts and work while mulling mine over.

Tim Wise on Donald Trump

Tim Wise is a race-relations "essayist, author, and educator," as described by his website. I saw him speak at Baylor and I have one of his books, White Like Me. I'm only about halfway through (school prevented me from reading more than a few pages at a time), but I really like his smarmy style and he gives me a lot to think about. Sometimes, he writes something so presumptuous, so "race-card" sounding, that it gives me pause, even with my aspirations to educate myself about race in America. Invariably, I stop and ask myself if my doubt is just another product of having grown up without the burden of systemic discrimination. Sometimes I remain skeptical, but it's a good thought exercise and I still love reading what he has to say on history and current events.

He wrote a piece on Donald Trump's racism that I wanted to invite you guys to read.

By the way, Tim Wise is white. Several times, I have found myself wondering why he has resonated with me more than minority individuals who speak or write on racism. Maybe I relate to his perspective more than to someone who has suffered from lack of white privilege. Maybe it was serendipity; Baylor didn't invite a speaker of color to give the keynote address at the Multicultural Summit. Hmm, I wonder why. Maybe, no matter how articulate and credible a minority speaker is, a white guy will still sound more credible--to a campus of Baylor students, to the Baylor administrator who wrote the check to pay Tim Wise, or to a half-white woman who has absorbed society's messages about race and is only now starting to question them.

(Note to self: find writers from other cultural perspectives who write about race in an engaging, educational way. Note to others: maybe the Baylor audience that day was representative of the diversity of our country; maybe the person who wrote the check is a minority; maybe Tim Wise's race played no part in making it "easier" for me to believe his message. But if I had to put money on it, I would guess not.)

Spike vs. Tyler

Apparently there's been some beef brewing between Spike Lee and Tyler Perry. I hadn't really been following the story so I don't know when it began, but I found this recent post containing one person's summary of the situation. This is another good entry, with short clips of both directors' viewpoints. Both these links are short, interesting reads.

I love watching movies and I really enjoy analyzing them in my head or with another person. Spike Lee is one of my favorite directors, for movies such as 25th Hour, Summer of Sam, Inside Man, When the Levees Broke, and Bamboozled. I am trying to work my way through his catalog and I've also seen Do the Right Thing, Girl 6, She Hate Me, and Malcolm X. I have several more to get to and I look forward to seeing them.

I've only seen one Tyler Perry movie, and it was by accident: Daddy's Little Girls was playing on TBS one night and I got sucked in at the beginning. Before that, I had only known him as some playwright who had started making movies with his name at the beginning of every title, like Blake Edwards. In fact, I thought he was a woman for a while due to the title Tyler Perry's Diary of a Mad Black Woman. Anyway, I vaguely knew that his movies had a reputation of being silly and vapid, like all those Nutty Professor spin-offs. But Daddy's Little Girls surprised me with its relatively feasible storyline, occasional weighty moments, and general lack of the ridiculousness I had heard of in association with Tyler Perry. It was a cute romantic movie which also dealt with some class issues and defied some stereotypes. For example, the main character is a loving, devoted father who shares custody of his three daughters with a negligent, vindictive ex (a reversal of the usual male-female roles). However, it does reinforce other stereotypes, such as when the dad reaches his wit's end and deals with his ex's drug-dealing, abusive new boyfriend by giving him a public beatdown (to the tune of Sam Cooke's poignant "A Change is Gonna Come"). That beatdown scene, by the way, is heartbreaking and triumphant in the context of this movie, but it still doesn't do much for the male violence problem.

I haven't seen any other Tyler Perry movies, but it is generally accepted that the man is business-savvy and Not An Obvious Douchebag. Some might argue that Perry just cranks out mediocre entertainment to make money off a complacent black audience, and that he exploits black stereotypes for cheap laughs. That is in fact Spike Lee's argument (he calls it "coonery buffoonery"). But Lee has just as much a niche as Perry does; Lee makes jarring, complex, uncomfortable movies that examine (among other things) what it's like for dozens of different racial and ethnic communities to live in the packed sardine can called New York City. But not everyone lives in NYC, and not everyone shares his experience of cultural and racial reality. When Lee criticizes Perry's work, it seems a little bit too much like he's saying, "THIS is the black experience you should be portraying. The one you've chosen to portray isn't valid."

Even on Perry's sitcoms, I find some interesting storyline twists that make me think. There was an episode of House of Payne where the suburban married mother of three ended up relapsing into drug addiction and leaving her family behind. Is that a tired African American media cliche, or is it a realistic portrayal of the kinds of situations that Americans struggle with today? For every person who cringes at what they see as negative portrayals of minorities, there's gotta be someone (like me) who finds it surprising and refreshing that a sitcom is willing to even go there. Actually, here's a quote from Wikipedia about the show, confirming my impression of its tone: "While primarily a comedy sitcom, House of Payne is known for featuring dark themes and subject matter, such as substance abuse and addiction..." This has got to be a good thing.

But I also love Lee's cerebral approach to the issues that face Americans today, and I would never want him to start making goofy, crowd-pleasing movies (although I think he has been trying to increase his mass appeal with later movies). And I haven't seen any Madea movies but maybe they are insufferably trite and stereotypical (research to follow). And while Lee's criticism of Perry may or may not be warranted, he is definitely correct about some aspects of Hollywood such as the Magical Negro and tokenism.

It's an interesting debate. I think they both have important, valid points. What do you guys think about Spike Lee? What do you think about Tyler Perry? Is Lee too inaccessible, judgmental, and unsupportive? Is Perry a sellout who is sabotaging black cinema? Any movie recommendations?

(I need to watch some more Tyler Perry. As for Spike Lee, my favorite movie of his is Bamboozled, which I have watched several times, most recently last night. My boyfriend and I had a thoughtful discussion afterward on the Spike vs. Tyler topic, African American portrayals in the media, and how hard (impossible?) it is to truly comprehend and appreciate the issue without living inside it on a daily basis.)