3.14.2005
Goodwill Hunting
Wah.
So. Strange days. All you regular ATL Bling Bling readers (come on, I know there are at least - oh - four of you out there, even though Umbrella's new corporate ownership cut off his internet privileges) may have read about how I spoke power to truth at one of my last rape crisis trainings.
Well, apparently I ruffled a few feathers. The speaker with whom I disagreed, lets call him Ulysses (don't read into it, it sounds a lot like his real name) cried like Tonya Harding to the director of the program - said I had invalidated 20 years of work when I disagreed with his assessment that Patriarchal Masculinity is a direct cause of rape, not just a framework in which it takes place.
So, they called me in for a little tete-a-tete to see whether I had any empathetic defects or not.
I acquitted myself gracefully, but left the meeting unsettled. Being called in by the director of a rape crisis center to explain why, exactly, I'd made a grown man cry is - well, its a wake up call. It bothers me to think that I'd unknowingly hurt someones feelings. I don't mind defending my point of view but I try not to be to mean about it. I was worried about what exactly I'd said/done, so I borrowed the videotape of that training session and rewatched it.
And I learned something. I'd thought I simply didn't like Ulysses message. But as I watched my responses to his speech, I realized what really ticked me off was that he was being dogmatic. He did this creepy thing where he would solicit answers to a question from the crowd, incorporate our answers into one of his conclusions, then imply that everyone in the audience agreed with him - that we'd all worked together to arrive at his big stupid idea. It was a big fake consensus with nominal input from the crowd.
Ulysses wasn't too tolerant of disagreement, either. As people raised their hands with different points of view, he either said they were off topic, that people needed to think more, that often women were afraid of facing the enormity of the problem, or that he was running out of time and needed to get to his next point. About 2/3rds through the speech, he'd used these techniques to create a consensus in the room where the only people who offered answers anymore were people in agreement, and the women who'd previously shown other points of view fell silent. Except me.
What I did during the class was make it clear that I disagreed with him whenever I felt that he was coopting us as a group into his consensus. So when he asked for suggestions, I'd offer 'wrong' answers that couldn't be digested within his framework, forcing him to look for another person to answer. For example, he asked for a definition of gender bias, and I answered that it was when someone treated someone like a man or like a woman before recognizing them as a fellow human being. When he asked for questions one might have for him as a Man Against Violence, I asked whether he thought that knowing the nature of perpetrators is part of the healing process. Both times he kind of paused, frowned, then moved on.
I think I did good. I liked everything I saw of myself in that video, except that I looked like dogshit. I guess I've been under a little stress and though I haven't been venting, I've definitely let it get to my hair. Time to buy new shampoo or something. Anyone tried John Freida's 'Brunettes'? I'm curious if its worth the 7 bucks.
So. Strange days. All you regular ATL Bling Bling readers (come on, I know there are at least - oh - four of you out there, even though Umbrella's new corporate ownership cut off his internet privileges) may have read about how I spoke power to truth at one of my last rape crisis trainings.
Well, apparently I ruffled a few feathers. The speaker with whom I disagreed, lets call him Ulysses (don't read into it, it sounds a lot like his real name) cried like Tonya Harding to the director of the program - said I had invalidated 20 years of work when I disagreed with his assessment that Patriarchal Masculinity is a direct cause of rape, not just a framework in which it takes place.
So, they called me in for a little tete-a-tete to see whether I had any empathetic defects or not.
I acquitted myself gracefully, but left the meeting unsettled. Being called in by the director of a rape crisis center to explain why, exactly, I'd made a grown man cry is - well, its a wake up call. It bothers me to think that I'd unknowingly hurt someones feelings. I don't mind defending my point of view but I try not to be to mean about it. I was worried about what exactly I'd said/done, so I borrowed the videotape of that training session and rewatched it.
And I learned something. I'd thought I simply didn't like Ulysses message. But as I watched my responses to his speech, I realized what really ticked me off was that he was being dogmatic. He did this creepy thing where he would solicit answers to a question from the crowd, incorporate our answers into one of his conclusions, then imply that everyone in the audience agreed with him - that we'd all worked together to arrive at his big stupid idea. It was a big fake consensus with nominal input from the crowd.
Ulysses wasn't too tolerant of disagreement, either. As people raised their hands with different points of view, he either said they were off topic, that people needed to think more, that often women were afraid of facing the enormity of the problem, or that he was running out of time and needed to get to his next point. About 2/3rds through the speech, he'd used these techniques to create a consensus in the room where the only people who offered answers anymore were people in agreement, and the women who'd previously shown other points of view fell silent. Except me.
What I did during the class was make it clear that I disagreed with him whenever I felt that he was coopting us as a group into his consensus. So when he asked for suggestions, I'd offer 'wrong' answers that couldn't be digested within his framework, forcing him to look for another person to answer. For example, he asked for a definition of gender bias, and I answered that it was when someone treated someone like a man or like a woman before recognizing them as a fellow human being. When he asked for questions one might have for him as a Man Against Violence, I asked whether he thought that knowing the nature of perpetrators is part of the healing process. Both times he kind of paused, frowned, then moved on.
I think I did good. I liked everything I saw of myself in that video, except that I looked like dogshit. I guess I've been under a little stress and though I haven't been venting, I've definitely let it get to my hair. Time to buy new shampoo or something. Anyone tried John Freida's 'Brunettes'? I'm curious if its worth the 7 bucks.
