To pin or not to pin

[drwex]

(Brief aside: your word for today is "kakistocracy")

Today I'm wearing a safety pin to work. I've been debating about whether I should do so - whether I have the right, whether doing so will help or hurt. Last night over dinner I discussed with silentq and she suggested I should do it. Further input is sought.

Here's a bit of my thought process...

For comparison, I'm both happy and proud to wear a Backup Project ribbon at Arisia. When I'm there I feel I'm part of an organization that is taking active steps to create and promote an inclusive, harassment-free, diverse event and environment. I wear a Staff ribbon as part of the group that organizes and puts on the con and I think it's important to pair those two things. I want myself and other Staff to be examples of the best our community can be.

Now step outside the bubble of Arisia and into late-2016 America. The safety pin is intended as a symbol of personal promise to stand up against similar things - harassment, hatred, phobias and *isms like isolationism, racism, and sexism. It's a statement against hate, and particularly the hate that Trump gave voice to that came from the basket of deplorables within his supporters. [1]

The problem is that basket of deplorables, that core of hate, is me/us. It's white guys. Trumpism is a white guy problem - we made him and it's on us to fix this. When a person of color, or a woman, wears a pin they are making a statement of peer support. As a cis, able, white guy with a good job I'm in a position of great privilege and also likely to avoid direct ill effects of Trumpism. That my friends and people I care about will be hurt is virtually certain but you can't know that from looking at me.


[1] I still think it's important to identify distinctions between "Trump voter" and the core racists, anti-Semites, sexists, and bigots within that group. It's mostly aside from this post, though.


So, friends, what do you think when you see a white guy wearing a pin? What if you saw me wearing one? Am I helping, or possibly making things worse?

Comments

[woodwardiocom.livejournal.com]

A question of great interest to me as well.

[sweetmmeblue.livejournal.com]

I love you and I am so proud that you want to stand up for a better world and making you a better you to do it.

[chienne-folle.livejournal.com]

For a white guy I didn't know, if I saw him wearing a safety pin, I'd worry that he was just jumping on the bandwagon and that he only cared about looking like a nice person (possibly even as a way to pick up women).

For YOU, I know that you think deeply about things, that this stuff matters to you, and that you were caring about oppression long before the safety pin era. I think you definitely have the chops to wear a safety pin if you want to.

How you make it clear to people who DON'T know you that you're part of Group 2 and not Group 1 is, I think, the crux of the problem. I think those things get communicated in the way they've always done -- through facial expression, body language, and the words that come out of your mouth.

And while it's true that you're white and male and have a good job, you're also Jewish. No one who knows anything about the history of oppression thinks that Jews are safe just because they're white or male...

[davidfcooper.livejournal.com]

Intersectionality theorists have tended to view white Jews (and Israeli Jews of all complexions) as privileged. Period. For these theorists the Shoah in Europe and anti-Semitic restrictions in education, employment, housing and hotel accommodations in this country from the 1870s-1950s are ancient history. It will be interesting to see if the Alt-right's anti-Semitism changes that perception. Maybe the new Muslim-Jewish Advisory Council (http://www.sltrib.com/home/4585200-155/jewish-muslim-alliance-formed-against-anti-semitism-islamophobia), an alliance of the American Jewish Committee and the Islamic Society of North America, reflects such a change in perception.

[chienne-folle.livejournal.com]

I was born in 1958 to working class non-Jewish parents, so I'm a decade or two older than most of the theorists you mention. When I was in grad school for social psychology, during which time I created and taught a course called The Psychology of Stereotyping and Prejudice, it was a given that anti-Semitism was one of the major prejudices. Indeed, one of the things that helped psychological theorists to understand some aspects of how prejudice develops was the difference between American anti-Semitism and European anti-Semitism.

Many young people think anything that happened before they were born is ancient history, but historical forces don't stop operating just because young people fail to recognize them. :-)

In 1968, I was ten years old and living on Long Island, a place we'd just moved to from Delaware. One of the first things that happened in my new school was that one of the girls drew me aside, pointed to another girl, and whispered, "See her? She's a JEW!" So anti-Semitism was certainly alive and well and dividing people into groups long after the 1870-1950 period...

The girl who was pointed out to me was the first Jewish person I had ever knowingly met, and so I observed her. She was both beautiful and intelligent, and while my understanding of prejudice, of identity, and of Jewish culture has improved quite a lot since I was ten years old, some tiny part of me still expects all Jews to be beautiful and intelligent. And of course, the person in whose journal we're conversing certainly is. :-)

[chienne-folle.livejournal.com]

Sadly, this is happening: http://www.thestranger.com/slog/2016/11/21/24702810/meanwhile-on-our-nations-television-screens-are-jews-people.

[goddessfarmer.livejournal.com]

Wear the pin. It makes me feel safer.

[drwex]

Thank you for your thoughts.

[dcltdw]

I'm not going to answer your question, since I assume it's not addressed to straight cis guys of economic privilege.

Some thoughts:
1, I'm also interested in answers.
2, I figure, if I was going to do this stuff anyways, I might as well wear it. It's not like taking off the pin is going to change my behavior. But maybe I'm problematically wrong.
3, I have asked myself: if I were confronted by a marginalized group who said that me wearing it is bullshit, would I really be able to listen with compassion, empathy, humility, vulnerability? (The answer is: I don't actually know. But I do consider the question from time to time.)

[dcltdw]

Although I'll offer why I do wear it: pre-election, there was some fb discussion about some awful sexist thing and how guys weren't condemning it. I was like: would it be better to signal boost, or is this preaching to the choir?

One female friend responded: I haven't hit my limit of seeing guys complain about this, so yeah, signal boost.

Hello, yawning pit of one response speaking for an entire demographic, how are you. So yes, I'm trying to keep my eyes and ears and trying to be aware that I'm almost certainly suffering from confirmation bias.

[eccentrific.livejournal.com]

I don't know if it will help, but I am fairly certain that it won't hurt.

[drwex]

I appreciate your thoughts.

[gosling.livejournal.com]

Seeing it, I see an ally, and that makes me feel safer. Much safer. (I think if I saw more I would feel more hope and not keep being so terrified that I have moments when I can barely function.)

Also, yeah you are a middle class, white, cis-man, but in some ways you're easily a target of the deplorables too. We could all use all the allies we can get. All of us.

[drwex]

Thanks.

[intuition-ist.livejournal.com]

Yes, this. The pin makes me feel like I'm in the presence of someone who "gets it". I'm wearing one myself, and I know that it may well turn me into a target, but I can't *not*. Too much is at stake, and the time is long past to hide and be invisible.

[marius23.livejournal.com]

I've also been pondering this question. I haven't seen anyone yet at my work wearing a pin, so maybe I need to be an envoy?

I have two main concerns. 1. That I might be seen as being in chienne_folle's Group 1. But that's somewhat true even without the pin, and better to have more people in Group 2 to drown out the noise.

2. Can I actually walk the walk? If push came to shove, would I actually be able to put myself into potential harm's way?

[drwex]

I've seen the meme about putting oneself in harm's way and I reject it. Here's my argument from authority:

BARCC bystander training emphasizes that there are a variety of strategies that don't involve putting oneself in harm's way and in fact sometimes putting oneself in that way can escalate a situation. They teach that if you can't be safe don't do it. Second, back in my old lifeguard days it was always made clear that even though part of our job was to rescue people we were not to rescue people at risk to ourselves. Saving two drowning people is way harder than saving one. I still remember the chant "reach, throw, row, go" that we were taught in which going out into the water ourselves was the last resort.

And here's my argument from inclusivity: by this metric only the (most) able-bodied would be included. I don't think it's wise or correct to say that a person with, say, a mobility impairment can't wear a safety pin because they're incapable of chasing down a perpetrator. Nor do I think that was the intention.

[marius23.livejournal.com]

Both very good arguments. Thank you.

[mrw42.livejournal.com]

The pin isn't magic... If someone feels unsafe, and they don't know you, they may still feel uncomfortable approaching you, because you resemble their oppressors. On the other hand, I know it cheers me considerably and makes me feel safer in my society to see people around me (regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, etc.) wearing a symbol that shows that they want to create a safer world than the one we live in right now. I saw a lot of them around the IETF meeting here in Korea (a mostly white, mostly male environment) on many folks from the U.S. and elsewhere, and I was happy to see that.

Another reason to wear the pin is that it makes it easier for less privileged people to wear one.

[drwex]

Hmm, that last point is an interesting one.

I'm continuing to wear the pin, and I want to find something like beads so I can put a clear rainbow/pride symbol on it.

[intuition-ist.livejournal.com]

"makes me feel safer in my society to see people around me (regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, etc.) wearing a symbol that shows that they want to create a safer world than the one we live in right now"

This. I was immeasurably cheered to see one of our customers wearing one on his blazer lapel during a recent customer event at work. :)

[paradoox.livejournal.com]

Maybe you don't want CIS White Guys to comment, but you haven't actually said that.

I've been wearing one for about a week for several reasons one of which was driven home last night at dinner. (Although sometimes I forget to switch it from clothing to clothing.)

1) As someone said above "signal boost" / "to be an envoy of what the pin is". Last night at dinner of about six in Philly someone made a comment asking what the pin was and I gave them the brief answer and suggested they google it. I'm hoping at least one or two or three of the five other people start wearing a pin.

2) As someone said above "to make it easier for others to feel safe wearing one".

3) In the hope that no a-holes will start something around me because they are afraid I will give them shit back. Maybe this is a bad reason, but I am mad as hell.

4) In the hope that if someone feels threatened the pin might convince them that it is safe to approach me.