Gender

5 Apr 2016

Oppression – You Keep Using That Word, but it Doesn’t Mean What You Think It Means

Teachwell Gender, Political Parties Feminism, Prejudice, Sexism, University 0

Am I the only one tired of hearing the word “oppression” being thrown around like confetti? It was inevitable that there would be a cry of oppression in response to @oldandrew’s post yesterday (‘Is promoting women really the issue?’). In the age of the social justice warrior, how much one is a “victim of oppression” corresponds with one’s self-worth.

What is oppression though?

Definition (s):

Prolonged cruel or unjust treatment or exercise of authority.

The state of being subject to oppressive treatment

Mental pressure or distress

(Source: http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/oppression)

According to the Geneva Convention, cruel treatment includes: torture, humiliating and degrading treatment, willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health. Humiliating and degrading treatment includes lack of food, water or medical treatment. The idea that anything other than a tiny minority of women in this country are facing oppression on a daily basis is preposterous. While there are women who are the victims of domestic violence, assault and rape, the idea that all women are oppressed because of it is the worst kind of bandwagon jumping I can think of. Neither are the majority of women subjected to anything like cruel treatment day in day out like they are elsewhere.

Spare me the lecture too, I witnessed domestic abuse as a child and don’t think the genuine suffering of those women should be hijacked by a group of virtue signalers. Neither am I going to waste my time trying to trick myself into believing that I have it just as bad or worse than women in the past. I actually do have better things to do than twist reality so that I can throw myself a pity party.

We live in a society where legally no one is allowed to rape anyone else. I can already hear the “but the system is not perfect” being thrown back at me via the computer screen in a high pitched shriek of social justice warrior anger. I have some sympathy for that. However, the idea that any system can be perfect is part of the problem with the exaggeristas among us. They really do believe that there exists a utopia where there is no rape, no domestic violence, etc. As much as I hate to admit it, there is no cure for any of those things. The best we can do is ensure there are no legal loopholes, that victims know they can go to the police and that the justice system works effectively and is held to account for any poor judgements by the press. We can reduce but not eliminate the issue entirely.

Most change is slow and incremental but it is happening, and great gains have been made. A hundred years ago, I doubt many women would have reported a rape to the police, much less expect the rapist to be sentenced. Chances of being packed off to an asylum would have put off many.

What do most women in the Britain face? Some, and I do mean some, women face discrimination in their lives or at work. Not all, not all to the same extent and not all for the same reasons. Each generation faces its own challenges and has to meet these. It is narcissism of the worst kind to think that all human beings who lived before oneself should have figured out every problem so one can live in a utopian dream.

As for the third definition – mental pressure and distress – well the only distress I can see from those who claim oppression is the one they are causing by tying themselves in knots trying to prove they are oppressed in the first place.

The meaning of a word does matter and if we want to be taken seriously then let’s use the correct words and not words that sound dramatic. If your cause is just it doesn’t require you to exaggerate the nature of it.

This post was originally published on the Labour Teachers website.

21 Dec 2015

Being Human

Teachwell Gender, Humanity, Race Feminism, Prejudice, Racism, Sexism 10

Human beings are funny things, they really are. Despite the fact that we are all equally human, we seem to love inequality. We have created stratified societies; we have created divisions based on religion, colour of people’s skin, height, weight, language, etc. These differences exist but variations are just that, variations. The meaning we choose to attach to these differences is within our power, how we let it affect our interactions with other human beings is too.

Let’s get one thing straight here. As humans we are capable of both the good and the bad that other humans are capable of:

Courage or cowardice,

Bravery or bullshit

Heroics or hate,

Determination or despair,

Altruism or arrogance,

Insight or ignorance,

And so on and so forth.

No one group of humans has a monopoly on the better traits and no one group is immune to the bad ones. Reality provides the greatest evidence of this.

If you choose to classify yourself based on one of the parts of your whole being because you think it means you will or can only be associated with positive traits, if you wish to tell yourself this lie, then so be it.

But the downside is that if you choose to elevate these parts and give them greater importance than being a human, then you are dehumanising yourself. You are doing it to yourself, not others, not society, not the people who oppose you. That doesn’t mean some people are not trying but it is you who are letting them succeed.

So I won’t be joining the PoC brigade who insist I elevate the colour of my skin or the feminists who insist I elevate my gender above being a human being. Because while I have no choice but to be a human being, with both positive and negative traits and habits, I do have a choice whether I reduce myself to what is simply one part of the whole. Intersectionality be damned.

I will not support those who share the same skin colour and accept their word as gospel when they preach racism, hatred and manufacture history to suit their purposes, justifying it on the past actions of others. Because acting and behaving like the people who wronged ones ancestors is to disregard their experiences and suffering, not understand them or what they went through.

I will not support those who share my gender, who advocate discrimination and unfair treatment simply to sustain their grip on power. Who choose to undermine the greater cause of equal treatment just to corruptly prop themselves up in their petty fiefdoms and accuse those who oppose them of being sexist. I will not support their attempts to avoid criticism nor support the idea that they should not be scrutinised for some of the wrongs they have committed.

I hear much of the lenses of race and gender, and yet, no mention of the lens of humanity, which sees no less injustice or prejudice but demands that you fight these within and outside of yourself.

But it is a hard lens to look through. It exposes one’s hypocrisy; it highlights the contradictions in one’s arguments and ideas. It is unrelenting in demanding that one sees one’s flaws and inhumanity, and so I can see the reason for gazing through other, less judgemental, more flattering lenses.

Yet to view the world through the lens of race is to be racist and to view it through the lens of gender is to be sexist.

It is to replicate the very circumstances that led to the misery of so many millions of humans in the past. It is to ignore the basis of their suffering but use the fact that it existed to cloak one’s prejudices. It is to repeat, deliberately, the injustices of the past in new forms, based on new criteria. It is to reproduce the circumstances that led to gross injustice and inequality and justify inflicting them on a different set of victims, on behalf of those who sought an end to these ideas and practices.

It undermines and denies the very humanity that binds us and thus dehumanises us all.

6 Dec 2015

Why Do Crybullies Go To University?

Teachwell Ethnicity, Gender, Race Child-Centred, Methods, Prejudice, Racism, Sexism, Theory, University 9

I have veered between being utterly bewildered at the current crop of crybully university students, with their intolerant politics and need for ‘safe spaces’, and angry that their main goal seems to be to complain rather than learn. So far the worst of this seems to have occurred in the US, but it’s gathering a similar momentum over here.

But today it hit me, these particular students don’t see education as an intellectual activity or a means of achieving their best academically. Why should they?

The vacuous anti-intellectual, anti-academic nature of progressive education, with its emphasis on navel-gazing and extended infanthood, can be seen in its full glory in these students.

Brought up by ‘we teach children not subjects’ primary teachers and secondary teachers sticking different coloured hats on their head, education is meaningless.Teachers dance like monkeys to entertain, fun matters more than attainment and ‘interests’, no matter how trivial, trump the best that has been thought and said.

Is it any wonder they believe that the world revolves around them?

Is it any wonder they believe the university should pay attention to their feelings rather than their intellectual development?

Is it any wonder that they believe their personal wants take precedence over the learning of others?

These are students who have been fed the idea since entering the education system that:

a) they don’t have to take any responsibility for their actions (it’s the teachers fault after all),

b) that those who behave appallingly deserve to be listened to and

c) they are entitled to exercise inordinate levels of power over the adults who teach them.

It’s not surprising they have internalised these beliefs and ideas. This is what education is about for them.

As one observer put it, these are ‘over-privileged special little snowflakes’, the epitome of self-centered, narcissistic attitudes honed over their lives so far. So no, higher education is not about developing one’s academic and intellectual abilities for these students. Why should it be?

Special Thanks to Ben Garrison for granting me permission to use his cartoon ‘Cry Bullies’ as the featured image for this blog. Go to http://grrrgraphics.com to see more of his work.