stavvers

An incitement to anarchy

This story has taught me that “incitement” entails commenting on something that has already happened and suggesting that expansion of such behaviour would not have entirely negative consequences. I hereby incite anarchism.

I think if more than one person is waiting for something, they should form a queue, with those who arrived first at the front of the queue. When this happens, it is fair and a very effective way of doing things.

I think that if you have too much dinner on your plate, and your friend is still hungry, you should give them the rest of your dinner rather than throwing it away. That way, no food gets wasted and both of you get to eat until you’re comfortably full.

I think everyone should treat other people as human beings rather than as a skin colour or what you think their genitals look like or as a slave or master. The world would be nicer that way.

I think that people should place far less trust than they do in the things the media and other authorities tell them. Knowledge should be a personal quest for all people, not just absorption of party lines. We might all be able to make better decisions that way.

I think that patriarchy and kyriarchy and the class system and racism and ableism and homophobia and transphobia and all forms of oppression are harmful to all of us. I think we could do better without those systems.

I think that imposed order in the form of religion, the state and capitalism are harmful to all of us and drive oppression. I think we could do better without these artificial structures.

I think that people should be able to take action with which they are comfortable to take apart artificial structures of oppression. This action can take any form they see to be right, provided their actions do not harm another person. I think that it is absolutely right that people strive to heal the world by any means necessary.

This is an incitement to anarchy. Such incitement is, according to our crooked judicial system, punishable by draconian, disproportionate penalties. This is but one more reason why I believe anarchy to be far less dangerous than the current system.

When not reporting a rape seems like a sensible option

Trigger warning for rape and systemic abuse of rape survivors

Some years ago, I was raped. I never reported it.

I am not alone: the vast majority of rapes are not reported to the police. Some estimates suggest up to 95% of rapes are unreported. The thing is, a lot of the time, not reporting a rape seems like a sensible option.

When a woman reports a rape, forensic evidence is gathered using a rape kit. This procedure is highly invasive, consisting of a full, intimate physical examination and sampling from parts of the body which have only recently been violated. It is highly understandable that many survivors would not want to subject themselves to this intrusive procedure following a traumatic experience. There is also questioning, sometimes with an insensitive or disbelieving tone from the police. Between half to two thirds of rape cases never make it past investigation, and there is a paltry 6.5% conviction rate. A convicted rapist will serve an average of eight years in prison.

Then there are horrifying stories like this. Layla Ibrahim was attacked and raped by two men. She was courageous enough to report this to the police, even though the police had a track record of repeatedly arresting her twelve year old brother and failing her sister after a beating, due to being a mixed-race family in a predominately white area. Despite overwhelming forensic evidence, the police chose not to believe Layla. She was sent to prison for three years.

This did not happen in Iran or Sudan. This did not happen many years ago. This happened last year in the UK.

It is yet another story of rape culture. It differs from others in magnitude, not substance. We live in a world where survivors of rape are not believed.

Rape culture falsely differentiates between “serious rape” and other rapes. This dichotomy alone is enough to ensure that many rapes are not reported. I did not report my rape because rape culture had taught me that what happened to me was not rape. So many women I know have had a similar experience.

When a woman does identify that she has been raped, she faces disbelief from others. This is particularly true if she has been raped by someone powerful: the treatment of the women who accused Julian Assange and Dominique Strauss-Kahn of rape are testament to this. It is also true if she has been wearing “the wrong” sort of clothes, or being “the wrong colour”, or behaving in a way that rape culture dictates is a “definite sexual invitation“.

Layla Ibrahim was accused of “wasting police time” with reporting her rape. Meanwhile, 450 London detectives have been pulled from their usual work to go over CCTV footage of rioters with a view to prosecute them. What, here, is more of a waste of police time? Seeking justice for a person brave enough to be in the minority of people who report rape, or sending a kid to prison for nicking a pair of trainers?

Not reporting a rape seems to be the best possible option in a culture which allows rape, sometimes encouraging it. Not reporting a rape seems to be the best possible option in a broken justice system where barely any survivors see justice served. Not reporting a rape seems like the best possible option where the survivor can be sent to prison while the rapists walk free.

What, then, can be done for rape survivors seeking justice?

In her fantastic book Cunt: A Declaration of Independence, Inga Muscio proposes a solution: Cuntlovin’ Public Retaliation:

The basic premise of C.P.R. is publicly humiliating rapists. Since rapists count on a woman’s shame and silence to keep them on the streets, it seems to me an undue amount of attention focused on rapists would seriously counter this assumption.

C.P.R. can be employed when a woman is sure of her attacker’s identity. Since most attacks are not perpetrated by strangers, this is a highly relevant factor.

There is safety and power in numbers.

A group of two hundred women walking into the place of employment of a known rapist would have an effect. If each of these women were in possession of a dozen rotting eggs which were deposited on the rapist’s person, the rapist might well come to the conclusion that he had committed a very unpopular act, one which was not tolerated by the community. If a rapist had to walk through a crowd of angry, stating, silent or quietly and deadly chanting women to get to his car in the grocery store parking lot, he might feel pretty uncomfortable.

This technique would require a vast degree of solidarity among women and allies. Were it to happen, though, it would feel a damn sight more like justice than the current shambolic system.

The risk to survivors is considerably lower in Muscio’s admirable proposition. Here, they do not risk further invasion with no justice served. They do not risk imprisonment for daring to report a rape to a morally bankrupt police force. They do not become passive pawns in a game of patriarchal power. It is justice for survivors, by survivors.

Muscio stresses non-violence, and I thoroughly agree. Violence is not a solution to violence. Showing a rapist that such behaviour is thoroughly intolerable, reminding him that his behaviour is thoroughly unacceptable, through a supportive network of the community–that is more like what justice looks like.

Were this to happen, rape culture would topple. For this to happen, we need to fight rape culture. Then, perhaps, we will see true justice.

Why the government is making bad decisions after the riots

Following the riots, the government have made a decision which is likely to lead to more, rather than less rioting. These decisions are welcomed by a sizeable chunk of the British public, who are suddenly developing a bloodthirsty yearning for water cannons, rubber bullets and live ammunition–again, despite the fact that such tactics are likely to lead to more riots. They are also pursuing a vindictive policy to evict families of those charged and convicted with rioting from their social housing. How this measure is supposed to help is thoroughly unclear.

The collective lack of good judgment is hardly surprising: indeed, it is a natural consequence of decision making under stress. For once, this may not be entirely a consequence of the fact that we have a government who have nothing but contempt for anyone who is not rich and white.

It is important to acknowledge the context in which these decisions have been made: there is a climate of fear, stress and anger, and demands that Something Must Be Done Immediately. In this kind of context, good decisions are rarely made.

On an individual level, decision making is greatly affected by emotion. The ability to feel emotions is necessary for a person to make decisions: those who have been brain damaged and lose the ability to feel emotion suffer severe impairments in their ability to make decisions in their day-to-day life. High, negative emotions are problematic in making decisions, though.

In stressed decision making, the decision maker tends to focus their attention very narrowly and not examine all possible alternative analyses of the situation and courses of action. Instead, a hasty solution is proposed, one which may not be particularly fit for purpose in solving the problem. To make a good decision requires clear thinking on possible solutions to a problem and the consequences of such solutions. In their response to the riots, the government have not thought through possible consequences of their decision.

The type of emotion experienced also impacts decision making. In general, being in a good mood improves decision making and problem solving: thinking is more creative, flexible, thorough and efficient. The decisions made by the government were not made in a good mood: on top of stress, most of the senior members of government had to come back from their holidays, which is likely to add a further dampener on their moods.

The type of negative mood has also been shown to affect decision making differentially. In a state of anxiety, decision makers are biased towards making “safe” decisions: ones which are low-risk and low-reward. In contrast, when sad, a high-risk, high-reward option is more likely to be chosen. The findings of this study may not be particularly pertinent to the situation at hand, though, as it used a “gambling” methodology where participants were aware of the risks and rewards available from each course of action. In a more nuanced setting such as responses to the riots, such information was unlikely to be available, and, more importantly, unlikely to be fully surveyed by the decision makers.

When a group makes a decision under stress, they are no more likely to make a good decision than an individual. In fact, group processes may make the decision even worse. This is due to a phenomenon called groupthink, which I touched upon in my discussion of consensus decision making.

The word “groupthink” is loaded, melodramatic, reminiscent of an Orwellian dystopia, but this does not mean it does not happen. Through analysis of historical decision-making, and observations of group decision-making, a well-documented effect emerges: cohesive groups, particularly those under pressure, often make poor decisions. Crucially, this tends to happen when the group is attempting to reach a consensus.

The theory behind groupthink proposes eight “symptoms”:

Illusions of invulnerability creating excessive optimism and encouraging risk taking.

Rationalizing warnings that might challenge the group’s assumptions.

Unquestioned belief in the morality of the group, causing members to ignore the consequences of their actions.

Stereotyping those who are opposed to the group as weak, evil, biased, spiteful, impotent, or stupid.

Direct pressure to conform placed on any member who questions the group, couched in terms of “disloyalty”.

Self-censorship of ideas that deviate from the apparent group consensus.

Illusions of unanimity among group members, silence is viewed as agreement.

Mind guards — self-appointed members who shield the group from dissenting information.

Groupthink is facilitated by stressful conditions. The phenomenon of groupthink impairs decision making in a number of ways:

Incomplete survey of alternatives
Incomplete survey of objectives
Failure to examine risks of preferred choice
Failure to reevaluate previously rejected alternatives
Poor information search
Selection bias in collecting information
Failure to work out contingency plans.

When surveying alternative courses of action is already impaired, decision making as a group can further narrow available options, leading to convergence on a solution which is inadequate at the very best. This appears to be what happened following the COBRA meetings to plan responses to riots.

The type of leader is an important factor in times of stress, and it is an area where followers themselves make poor decisions. This is because in times of crisis, people are drawn to a charismatic leader over any other type of leader. In one lab study, it was found that people primed with thoughts of death were most likely to vote for an imagined charismatic political candidate than one who was task-oriented, or one who focused on compassion and appreciation of followers. Preference for charisma has also been identified in real-world observational studies, such as in the aftermath of 9/11.

David Cameron is somewhat of a style-over-substance leader, and a crisis like this can be beneficial to him in this respect, as he is nothing if not charismatic. Indeed, his approval rating in the last week has improved (although it is still currently negative), and 45% of surveyed people believe he responded well by coming back from holiday and making some thoroughly dangerous decisions. Right now, if Cameron continues to act charismatically, giving perfectly-written speeches and flashing his Oxford grin, consequences for him will not be negative. It could possibly act to improve his standing in a climate of fear and stress.

I wrote this post assuming the best of our current government. A large part of me believes that much of their response is deliberate, an escalation in their war against the poor. The decisions will have long-term implications for public order situations such as demonstrations, they will make people homeless and clog up our prison and justice system with people who need to see a future rather than a barred window.

However, decision making in a crisis is always going to be problematic. We need to be aware of its shortcomings and avoid swift reactions without thinking through implications and consequences. This is a lesson that we must all learn so we can respond better in emergencies and to sudden, horrifying scenarios.

The government reaction frightens me. I cannot see a way that things will get better.

A lack of oppression is not what caused the riots

A lot of the discourse surrounding the recent riots has focused on a very individualist perspective: bad people, wrong people, criminals. This analysis is at the expense of examining systemic problems–the role of poverty and deprivation, provocative policing, rampant consumerism.

Then there is this article: “How our race taboo makes us colour blind to the truth” [clean link; this does not deserve clicks]. Here, the author examines systemic causes and concludes that what we need is more racism and more patriarchy. The whole thing is enough to leave one shaking with rage. It is a torrent of hate, a portrait of pure prejudice. It’s also completely wrong. The author appears to exist on a completely different plane of existence to reality.

Perhaps the most astounding element in the television coverage of the riots over much of England has been the steadfast refusal to mention the race of most of the rioters.

Except everywhere. The television and the news reports perpetually make reference to race, both in dog-whistle terms and overtly, gratuitiously mentioning “a mixed-race girl”, “a black boy”.

They are clearly, and overwhelmingly, Afro-Caribbean, the descendants of immigrants, though such has been the utter British failure to integrate so much of the immigrant population that many have retained something of a Caribbean accent. Admittedly, not all of the rioters are ‘black’: clearly, some white youths have joined in.

According to the writer, young white people are being lead astray by the bad immigrants with their strange way of speaking. The casting of white people as passive rather than active agents is clearly deliberate: the writer is so hell-bent on pushing the race angle that he needs to handwave away the existence and participation of white people in the riot.

After this, there is a brief anti-feminist, sexist interlude:

An astonishing number of young males in London are the sons of single mothers. They have been raised without the presence of a male authority figure to impose familial order and, furthermore, and most vitally, to promote the patriarchy.

Contrary to what the feminist mantra of recent decades has proposed, the patriarchy was not invented to oppress woman, but devised by Abraham to control men.

Let us ignore the batshit notion that rioting is caused by Not Enough Patriarchy for a minute. What I suspect the author is driving at here is the notion of children obeying their fathers, which is what is proposed in the Bible. This is, strangely for the Bible, actually not gendered. Patriarchy was devised to control. Not to control men, but to control everyone. And it does.

The riots, though, I do not think can be blamed on the patriarchy–presence or absence thereof. Gender and gendered oppression does not seem to play as much of a role as poverty here.

Adolescent males, without an imposed order, are as feral as chimpanzees. This is why all societies have adopted rigorous means of imposing authority on teenage boys.

Recall that merely a few paragraphs ago, the author was blaming the rioting on race: now he is comparing rioters to chimpanzees. The use of this word, again, is likely deliberate: a piece of dehumanising language typically applied to people of colour. The second sentence is thoroughly unreferenced, and I doubt that the author is an expert in comparative anthropology. Certainly, this effect is not considered a cultural universal.

Using logical leaps, the author then continues his tirade against single mothers, declaring them to be “incentivised” by benefits and asserting that it is wrong that women can bear children without being married. It is a hate-filled assertion, thoroughly steeped in patriarchy; consciously so. The author believes patriarchy to be the thing that was missing in the world.

Following this, the author bends reality to suggest that the immigrants coming over here and taking our jobs is another problem which caused not just rioting but also the financial crisis. Once again, this seems to be all a thin veneer over personal hatred: it is not backed up by evidence, simply by assertions.

In short, what happened here is an attempt at a systemic explanation of what happened this week which bends everything towards hate. In the author’s world, black people are feral, and the Polish are somehow to blame. In the author’s world, feminism has won and broken everything. It is nothing but bigotry, this article: these claims carefully flutter on the covert side of prejudice, yet are riddled with it.

It must be hard, being the person who wrote this article, with such hatred for all but white men.

Evidence-based public order policing: The Met are Doing It Wrong.

The reaction to the riots has been what can kindest be described as knee-jerk, though “absolutely bloody ridiculous and terrifyingly driven by a desire for revenge” is more apt. The police have now been given the power to use what are essentially lethal, dangerous weapons against crowds. Morally this is completely wrong. It is also likely to be ineffective, if not actively making things worse.

The thing is, the standard police approach to policing crowds is already completely wrong. I have been on a lot of protests and have been unlucky enough to end up kettled twice. On neither of those occasions did the kettles cool everything down and quell anger: quite the opposite happened. It’s not fun to have to endure a debate with oneself about whether to piss on the statue of Churchill or the statue of Lloyd George (in the end, I went for sneaky option C, and fashioned a toilet cubicle from metal fencing and tarpaulin. When I got out, there was a queue for the ersatz facilities). While I built, all around me people took poles and smashed in the windows of the Treasury. Horses charged, batons rained down on skulls and the people fought back.

There is evidence behind the idea that crowd control and public order policing is taking completely the wrong approach. This report provides theory, evidence and recommendations, and I would thoroughly recommend you read the whole thing.

Public order policing subscribes to a theory of crowd psychology that has very little evidence behind it. It assumes that once a sufficient number of people are assembled, they will become irrational and easily open to agitation. Crowds, by this theory, are dangerous, a hive mind which must be controlled: “the crowd is a barbarian”. Police are trained in this model, and taught to disperse or contain crowds where they form. This approach is demonstrably ineffective, and as supported by evidence as classic crowd psychology itself.

A better approach to describing crowd psychology is the Elaborated Social Identity Model (ESIM). This theory has roots in Social Identity Theory and Social Categorisation Theory: our behaviour is influenced by identification as a member of a group and roles we take on. We divide the world into “us” and “them”. In a crowd situation, this becomes “police” and “protesters” or “football fans” or “people who fucking hate the police”. As a member of a crowd, one identifies with this group. The police are “outsiders”. When police use indiscriminate, coercive tactics such as baton charges or kettling, the crowd will start to see itself and everyone else in the crowd as posing very little threat, and the police use of force as illegitimate. This leads to a strengthening: the crowd as “us”, the police as “them”. This can empower people to confront the police in a way they would not have done had they been left to their own devices. This can escalate to rioting, caused, inadvertently, by the very tactics the police are using to avert rioting.

The us-and-them mentality extends to the police themselves. The police tend to view crowds as a homogenous, dangerous mass that requires controlling, partly as an effect of their training, but partly as an effect of their social identity as a police officer. A friend of mine, while kettled, once ended up in conversation with a police officer. She asked to get out. “I’m sorry,” he said, “you’re all the same to us. It could have been you who graffitied Nelson’s Column.”

With the weight of evidence suggesting classic police tactics make things worse rather than better, is is clear that police tactics need to change. Fortunately, there is a much better way of policing. It involves taking a graded approach, and, crucially, treating people as individuals rather than members of a crowd. There are four phases to this approach:

Understanding the crowd and their motivations. Understand the culture and the context. Communicate in advance what is and is not acceptable.
On the day, visibility of the police should initially be low-impact: they should move in pairs, and wear standard uniforms rather than riot gear. No helmets, shields, or visible batons. They should interact with the crowd positively: smiling and adopting a friendly posture, being helpful with directions when they can. Communication is key.
If trouble arises, target only the trouble. It is made clear in the report that this does not mean arresting “known” people, the go-to technique for public order policing. Instead, it means targeting those who are causing the trouble, and only those. Communication, once again, is crucial. No acting against the whole crowd.
If there is still a problem and a riot breaks out, go back to usual police tactics of beating up everyone.

Three interesting things emerge from where this approach is used in practice. First of all, self-policing tends to start happening: members of the crowd will be less likely to accept violent behaviour. Secondly, the police are perceived as far more legitimate: the “all coppers are bastards” effect dissipates. Finally, and most importantly, the situations do not escalate. When the approach was tested in Euro2004, in zones where police were using the approach, the riot gear never came out, and only one England fan out of 150 000 present was arrested. The approach, it seems, averts riots.

There are two things in the report that bother me. First, and most importantly, is the assertion in the report that using this approach will facilitate intelligence gathering. As a believer in the right to privacy, I am not particularly comfortable with this. Secondly, as an anarchist, I do not really believe in the necessity of the police in the first place. This report, though, shows they are not hugely necessary at a mass gathering: it is gratifying to see evidence that, when left alone, a crowd will tend to self-organise and decide on non-violence: this is one of the reasons I am so annoyed to see rioting described as anarchy: anarchy is the state of order naturally emerging, and people working together.

Police tactics for crowd control, as currently used, are provocative. Bringing in bigger, more dangerous weapons which will hit anyone indiscriminately will not make anything any better. If anything, it will escalate the situation, provoking a war between the police and anyone who is not the police.

It is, of course, the government’s traditional approach to evidence. They ignore it at the expense of pursuing populist political point-scoring. It will endanger us all.

Evolutionary psychology and anarchy

I hold a particular, burning hatred of The Blank Slate, a seminal popular evolutionary psychology book. It seems to me that many people read it and, without applying any critical thinking, believe themselves to now be experts in human nature and that we’re all hardwired to be bellends so acting like a bellend is completely fine. I’ve basically stopped approving comments that cite The Blank Slate, because they’re always completely wrong.

In short, the author of The Blank Slate, Steven Pinker, is a psychologist. Not an evolutionary psychologist: he did some very good work in child language acquisition and visual cognition. It is disappointing to see someone with scientific training write a book so unscientific. Rather than presenting a scientific account, The Blank Slate uses anecdotal evidence and pure speculation to make its point, and the point is that everything is how it is because it’s just human nature and so that’s how it is. The back of the book is full of breathless praise from right-wing newspapers, as it confirms their world view. However, The Blank Slate is not good science. Far from it. I will not critique the whole thing here: for those interested, here is a very comprehensive overview. For a shorter read, I wrote something about evolutionary psychology’s attitude towards gender here, and The Blank Slate is riddled with such problems.

Instead, I am going to focus on one short part of The Blank Slate which is completely wrong: Pinker’s views on anarchism.

In the media this weekend, there has been a lot of conflation of anarchy with lawlessness in commentary on the London riots. Anarchy is distinct from lawlessness: it refers to the absence of imposed political authority, while lawlessness has an implication of disorder. Pinker believes these two concepts to be one and the same:

The generalization that anarchy in the sence of a lack of government leads to anarchy in the sense of violent chaos may be banal, but it is often overlooked in today’s still-romantic climate. (The Blank Slate, p331)

Pinker argues that violence is “a near-inevitable outcome of the dynamics of self-interested social organisms” (The Blank Slate, p329), and that police are the adaptation to this aspect of human nature. Like the rest of Pinker’s book, the evidence is purely anecdotal. What is provided is a series of anecdotes which paint a picture of how we are but one line of riot cops away from a Mad Max dystopia.

At one point, Pinker explains that he used to be an anarchist, and that this changed following the Montreal police strike, where riots broke out. Of this incident, Pinker says:

This decisive empirical test left my politics in tatters (The Blank Slate, p331)

Empirical test? Pinker is supposed to be a fucking scientist! An anecdote is hardly an empirical test!

The evidence seems cherry-picked. At no point does Pinker discuss anywhere autonomous communities which operate perfectly well without police–take, for example, Greenham Common or any number of communes. The former example, Greenham Common may not sway Pinker, given his rather dated gender politics, but there are plenty of examples of places which have done just fine without any governance from the state.

However, fighting anecdotal evidence with more anecdotal evidence is the wrong approach–it is no better than Pinker’s own method.

Essentially, two hypotheses are proposed by Pinker in his treatment of anarchism:

1. That violence is an integral part of human nature

2. That the only way to stop it is to have a police force

The first hypothesis is not possible to test: this is a shortcoming of evolutionary psychology as a whole: one cannot empirically test whether something is “human nature” or not. We can look at proxies–for example, if violence is genetic, we can study identical twins who were raised apart, though even this methodology is flawed.

The second hypothesis would require controlling for all confounding variables, to test whether a police force is truly necessary and the only thing standing in the way of our horrifying nature. Essentially, one would need people raised in a complete vacuum with no mitigating factors such as economic deprivation or racism. This is, of course, impossible to test.

So what we are left with is a fairy story: we’re all violent, grappling thugs, and it’s only the presence of a policeman that stops us chucking a brick through the nearest window and running off with a spangly new telly.

The other side to the story is equally untestable: the very same two impossible experiments would need to be conducted to test whether we could do a lot better without state-controlled law enforcement.

Basically, there’s no science anywhere. We cannot discuss whether human nature inevitably tends towards looting any more than it inevitably tends towards cooperation. The difference is, anarchism does not tend to pretend it has science on its side: it is a political movement, an analysis of the system we have an a conclusion that we would probably do better without it.

I would feel a lot more comfortable, I think, if people stopped couching their political beliefs in pseudo-science. Rioting is a complex issue with a solution far beyond a little bit of anecdotal storytelling which concludes it’s in our genes. It must, therefore, be treated as such.

Likewise, anarchism is a complex political ideology. It cannot be handwaved away with nonsense and misconceptions.

Data confidentiality: do not fill in the Guardian riot survey.

Following yesterday’s riots in Tottenham, the Guardian has launched a survey to seek further information about what happened. It is spun as an attempt to understand why the riots took place following in a rich academic tradition of post-riot interviewing.

If you were in Tottenham, do not fill in the survey.

Here’s the thing: with academic research, there are certain rules surrounding how survey information is used. Before one does a survey, one has to apply for ethical permission and fulfil criteria to make sure that the data stay confidential, with those who provided it remaining completely confidential. This means that research surrounding sensitive issues such as illegal activity can be gathered without putting the participant at risk. On the flip side, it means more honest responses which will help researchers gain a better understanding of the issue. What is collected in academic surveys is completely unidentifiable. It’s research ethics.

The Guardian survey does not do this.

There is no guarantee of confidentiality to be seen. Information which could possibly lead to the arrest of the survey participant or acquaintances with no guarantee of any safeguards. Given that political policing and political sentencing are so prevalent these days, it is not safe to fill in this survey. Given that the phone-hacking scandal has exposed that it is almost commonplace for information to exchange hands between journalists and police, it is not safe to fill in this survey. You may land yourself in trouble. You may land your friends in trouble.

Show solidarity. Stay safe. Do not fill in the survey.

Is my body too feminist for you, babe?

Some vintage bollocks from Beyonce. Reality does not appear to work the same way for her as it does for the rest of us, and so it is impossible to be angry about any of it.

First of all, according to Beyonce, she sparked an uprising in Egypt. This uprising consisted of some women singing along with a pop song. While wearing burkas, but somehow, with X-Ray vision, Bey could see their mouths moving.

After bringing a peaceful gender revolution to the Middle East, Beyonce goes on to say something even more baffling:

‘I need to find a catchy new word for feminism, right? Like bootylicious.’

Beyonce and Sasha Fierce have laid down an edict. We must rebrand immediately. We are no longer feminists. We are bootylicious. I am anarcha bootylicious, though inspired by radical bootylicious ideas. I reject Beyonce’s bootyliciousness because it comes from a very privileged perspective. Likewise, Mediocre Dave finds Germaine Greer’s bootyliciousness problematic in our modern age.

Perhaps this rebranding can work on other areas of thought. I suspect Beyonce would be delighted if we changed socialism to “to the left, to the left.” StarbarMurray suggests we can apply this rationale to other areas, such as changing Thatcherism to Nasty Girl.

Basically, the whole thing is too silly to be angry about. The comment thread is open for discussion of the finer points of bootylicious theory.

Maturity and making peace with the establishment

I recently took the Political Compass test. I rather predictably ended up in the bottom left (the anarchist corner), though I do not think it is a brilliant measure of where a person lies politically–some of the questions were worded poorly, and I think more than two dimensions are required to measure political leanings and… That is essentially beside the point. This post is about one of the questions on the test:

“Making peace with the establishment is an important aspect of maturity.”

I have heard this line before. I have heard it from trolls. I have heard it from friends. It is nigh-on memetic. Grow the fuck up and accept the system.

I vehemently disagree. To unpick this statement, let us turn to the work of Jean Piaget, a hugely influential developmental psychologist. Piaget’s research focused on how children learned, and how they mature cognitively. Through observation and experimenting with teaching, he identified key cognitive milestones which children pass as they mature.

According to Piaget, children are natural, curious “mini-scientists”. As they grow older, they develop and refine the ability to develop and test hypotheses, building an understanding of how the world works. Maturity is dynamic, as conceptualised here: a constant quest of questioning everything. Making peace with the establishment is the opposite of this: making peace with the establishment is to take a step back from logical experimentation and exploration.

Acceptance of the establishment also requires the belief that everyone thinks the same way: that the established set of default options is what is generally accepted as correct and that anyone who believes otherwise is somehow strange. The belief that everyone thinks in the same way as you is known as egocentrism. According to Piaget, one should grow out of this belief by the age of seven.

Unswerving acquiescence has an ancient tradition. In is apparent in the Bible: 1 Corinthians 3 is basically St Paul bollocking the Corinthians for being immature and telling them to grow the fuck up and do what God tells them. A little later in the same book, the famous quote comes up:

When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me (1 Corinthians 13:11)

Here, Paul is talking about settling down into a monogamous relationship and starting the traditional family favoured by the system.

For two thousand years, submission to the established order has been incentivised by dangling the carrot of maturity. When boiled down, it sounds like a schoolyard taunt. “If you don’t do as we say, you’re a baby“. It is the clique setting the rules, enforcing their law in any way they can. The law of the playground plays out on a large scale, and many of us buy it wholesale.

In a way, I was lucky to be so thoroughly unpopular at school that nothing I could do would gain social approval. I grew immune to such disdain and therefore had the means to allow myself to flourish. I read, I tried on identities. I experimented with views and beliefs. I learned all I could. And I came to the conclusion that something was not right in the world, and I fight what I, through Piaget’s top level of reasoning, concluded was correct. I accept I may be wrong, and presented with good evidence can be swayed.

I arrived where I am through thought. Surely this is more mature than blind acceptance?

Unseen sexism and journalistic misinterpretation of a research study

I seem to have reached the point where people send me things that will piss me off enough to blog about. Today, Nat sent me this: “Feminism’s misdirected targets”, a Guardian article

The article reports a research study called “Seeing The Unseen“, which is about attention paid to everyday sexism. The paper aimed to investigate whether people who were more likely to endorse benevolent sexist or modern sexist beliefs did so because they were unaware of sexist behaviour around them. The paper is open-source and, in a pleasant subversion of expectations, is actually linked in the Guardian article. At face value, it would almost appear as though the journalist had read the research paper, which is as much to be expected given that it is a freely-accessible paper.

However, I don’t think Jennifer Abel did read the whole paper. Abel gleefully takes apart a measure used in the study:

But the study didn’t ask women to seek sexism in discussions about women’s proper roles in marriage, combat or any other positions. Instead, it asked women to note:

“[If they] observed a man helping a woman with a task because he assumed that, as a woman, she should not have to grapple with it (eg, long drive, selection of a new laptop, carrying shopping bags).”

This is not true. It says, as clear as day in Table 1 of the article, what was measured. Among these things are hearing traditional stereotypes about women, heard traditional beliefs about relationships, heard paternalistic stereotypes about women, and witnessing traditional or paternalistic treatment of women. How this does not translate as seeking sexism in discussions about women’s proper roles in marriage, combat or and other positions, I do not know. Perhaps Abel didn’t look at the table. It is also worth noting that many of these observations are lifted directly from the gold-standard measure of benevolent sexism.

The measure Abel does report is not perfect, and I do wish the authors of the research paper had provided more context as to why these incidents were selected. It is a worthy critique based upon what is otherwise a fundamental misunderstanding of the research.

For the rest of the article, Abel builds to the thesis that feminism is targeting the wrong kind of sexism, and we should focus our energies on more hostile forms of sexism. This is erroneous on two fronts. Philosophically, it buys into the myth that one should only focus on one fight at a time rather than using all tools in the box. Scientifically, it is also wrong: benevolent sexism has real-world implications for women. Fighting benevolent sexism is therefore not a “misdirected target”. It is a valid target, a source of oppression. To say that it is misdirected is plain wrong.

Furthermore, there is some confusion in the article about Abel’s beliefs. Towards the beginning, she (incorrectly) outlines the journal in which the journal appears*:

in the current issue of Psychology of Women Quarterly. (Speaking of sexist beliefs, there is the idea that any questions about my psyche can be answered “Because hers is a woman‘s mind.”)

Yet later in the article, Abel says:

Even if humanity builds the feminist utopia of my dreams, there will still be certain traits more common in one sex than the other. I suspect, for example, people who choose careers working with young children will always skew overwhelmingly towards females.

Which one is it? Is it that men and women are fundamentally different in their minds, or is that untrue? The answer to that question is that it is untrue, which Abel touched upon at the beginning of the article and then changed her mind. Apparently she did not read Delusions of Gender.

Abel ends by saying that feminism has been hijacked by fundamentalists, feminists who believe benevolent sexism to be a major problem. It is a major problem. The evidence behind it suggests it to be a major problem. Abel clearly did not read this evidence.

One can hardly blame her; Abel is, after all, a journalist without scientific training, and a lot of the literature is paywalled. This is a shortcoming of science: how can journalists be expected to report adequately on an area of research if they cannot access some of the pertinent research? Furthermore, how can the piece be expected to accurately report when the piece was written by someone unfamiliar with reading research papers, then edited by someone unfamiliar with reading research papers, then published by someone unfamiliar with reading research papers?

It is a shame that even decent, doing-it-largely-right science reporting is still so poor. Every time it is in the media, misconceptions about benevolent sexism crop up, with the “but it’s not a valid target” being the most frequent response.

Science-types are traditionally quite rubbish at engaging with the media, and media-types are traditionally quite rubbish at engaging with science. I wish that more were involved in both. Perhaps, then, we would see accurately-reported research.

*In fact, Psychology of Women Quarterly makes no claims to cover the psychology of all women, any more than the discipline of women’s studies claims to understand every single woman ever.