I am grateful for the feedback on an early draft of this post that I
received from women friends.
Accusations of, to put it excessively mildly,
inappropriate behaviour on the part of a Hollywood bigwig were made
in public. People, quite rightly, rushed to support those making the
accusations. Other people came forward with their own stories of
attacks and harassment by the same man.
It's not the first time it's happened. It won't be
the last. Similar things have happened and will continue to happen in
many different contexts, especially where there are individuals seen
as too talented, important or powerful to assail. This isn't just
about films; it can happen in universities, in hospitals, in big
business. In a sense, this time isn't particularly special, when
considered with all of the others. However, this time there seems to
have been a little more success in taking the opportunity to raise
awareness of the ubiquitous nature of sexual harassment and assault
in our culture. Women (and girls) everywhere are posting “Me Too”
on social media. Statistics and psychology suggest that plenty of
women who have had such experiences aren't sharing, on top of those
who are. People are noticing – perhaps not as many as one might
hope, but they are noticing. Social media posts and web pages are
going viral with advice to men on how they can help deal with this
endemic cultural problem; of course, they attract trolls to their
comments, and perhaps some sincere but clueless guys as well. They
respond to these suggestions of how men could help, and they seem to
feel that we, men, are being victimised by such advice. That singling
out men as needing to take certain steps is unfair, even
discriminatory. I don't know how to make them learn. I'll admit that
I was once a clueless guy, though maybe not that clueless, and I'm
forever grateful to the women who persisted in helping me learn,
perhaps sensing that there was a sincere desire to “get it”; I'm
still working on getting there.
For the purposes of this post, in order to focus
on the issue in question, the language used herein will assume an
uncomplicated gender binary. This is obviously not an accurate
picture, and issues of harassment and abuse are more complex for
people whose gender does not match social assumptions, be they
transgender, gender non-confirming, or non-binary. In trying to
beware of misogyny, we must not fall into the trap of ignoring
transmisogyny, nor can we assume that someone will be immune to
harassment just because they do not fulfil the social or behavioural
expectations of their gender.
I'm not writing this to talk about recent events
or the social media phenomena that have flowed from them. This is a
Quaker blog, and I'd like to think about what Quakers should be
taking from all of this. It's a tough question to consider, because
we have a tendency to think that we're fantastic at equality, but
we're never as good as we think we are; indeed, that tendency to
think of ourselves as great at these things tends to lead to us being
blind to problems, or continuing in denial even when they become
apparent. Quakers are no more immune to hubris than anyone else, and
it is as potentially damaging as it is for everyone else.
Women have long had equal status in Quaker
Meetings, and nowadays it's not uncommon for a given Meeting to be
numerically dominated by women, or to have most or all of their
clerking team or their elders be women. The power dynamic within a
Meeting is not always male-dominated, and ideally isn't dominated by
either gender. Yet our Religious Society is situated within wider
society, and it interfaces with it frequently. Our Meetings for
Worship are open to the public, which is actually important for our
charitable status here in the UK. We hold community events and open
days, we engage in social action, we work with other organisations.
All these things, and more, bring “the World” into our Quaker
space. Thus, even if we could honestly say that Quakers would never
engage in harassment and assault – and that would be the height of
hubris – we still have to consider our interactions with wider
society. In addition, the power dynamics of wider society cannot help
but penetrate into our space, and society as a whole has spent a long
time telling men that they are entitled to behave in a certain way
towards women – from the most obviously unpleasant things to which
attention has recently been drawn, to simply taking up more space in
discussions and being louder. No amount of re-socialisation among
Friends, or anyone else, can remove the mark of that conditioning
from men. Of course, there are likewise patterns of socialisation
among women, but they tend to be bad for women, just as the
socialisation of men is also bad for women. It's bad for men, too,
but in a less immediately damaging way.
So we have a faith community that preaches
equality and self-determination, personal agency and respect. We have
a community of individuals who have also been preached to by wider
society, over their life, telling them that men act one way, and
women act another. That men should be forthright, put themselves
forwards, speak their mind; while women should be passive, not make a
fuss, defer to others. For women, overcoming that socialisation means
strengthening themselves socially, asserting that they should be
heard just as a man is – and yet society still tells women who do
this that they are being too pushy, that they are bitchy. At the same
time, men will dominate the speaking time in meetings without ever
realising, will override women who are speaking more than they do men
(though we override one another plenty as well). For all that a
Meeting for Worship might be numerically dominated by women, it's far
from unusual for a disproportionate number of those rising to
minister to be men. I've not done any studies on this, but my
experience suggests that men are more likely to be appointed to roles
that deal with finance, or as trustees – though whether this is a
result of something skewing the nominations discernment process or
because men are more likely to accept the nomination, it is hard to
know; certainly, society places greater expectation of caring
responsibilities, whether for children or parents, on women, which
can make it harder to take the opportunity of training at Woodbrooke,
say. While we preach equality, equal status, no difference in roles,
this is not always borne out in practice.
Now, I do not say this to castigate. I do feel
that we do better than wider society, and we should be glad of that,
maybe even a little proud. However, we cannot let our moderate
success blind us to the work still to be done, nor to the fact that
this disparity is a symptom of the same underlying social phenomena
that lead to scandals like the harassment and abuse of women in
certain industries. Nor can we assume that the fact we are better
means that these things do not happen among Quakers. Better does not
mean perfect, and nor does it mean good enough.
It is also often said that Quakers today are shy
of confrontation, preferring to resolve things as far as possible
without cross words or even verbal force. Yet when someone behaves
unacceptably, even if there is some mitigating circumstance such as a
mental health or cognitive impairment influencing their behaviour, if
we do not meet that behaviour with a clear attempt to remedy the
problem, we are tacitly approving of it. That attempt may be
confrontational – telling the person causing offence that their
behaviour is unacceptable is inherently confrontational, but
sometimes necessary – or it may not; in some cases simply telling
someone that their behaviour is beyond the pale, telling them to
stop, will do not good, not because they are unwilling to learn and
adjust, but because they are unable. There are other things to be
done in that case, and tenderly helping someone through such
difficulties does not exclude also protecting others from their
actions, however much they cannot be held truly responsible for those
actions. Those who know me will know that I am passionate about the
inclusion of disabled people in Quaker activity, but that inclusion
cannot be at the cost of the safety of other Friends. Sometimes
inclusion requires considerable work to protect others, and sometimes
it is not possible to include everyone in every activity.
We also cannot assume that such circumstances will
apply in all cases where someone behaves inappropriately. Indeed,
some men have become so aware of the value of such arguments that
they are ready to use them when called out on their behaviour.
Sometimes they don't have to – people will often just say “he's
probably a bit autistic”, yes, almost always about men (there's a
whole other set of things that can be said about gender and
perception/expectation of autism-spectrum stuff). Indeed, the people
with issues influencing their behaviour are the ones most likely to
be noticed and caught; they are also those most likely to be unhappy
that they have upset people and wanting to learn from it, difficult
as they might find it to do so.
On the other hand, people like these powerful
Hollywood executives, sports coaches and politicians do what they do
not because they have behavioural compulsions, not because they do
not know right from wrong, but because they do not care
about right and wrong in such cases – and they are sure they can
get away with it. This is where
a culture where we are sure that such things can't happen is
particularly dangerous. If everyone “knows” that these things
can't happen among Quakers, that can only feed the sense of immunity
that they might feel. Indeed, we were once very trusting of our
volunteers in finance and stewardship – until there was, here in
Britain Yearly Meeting, a significant scandal regarding the actions
of a Monthly Meeting treasurer. Now the report on this is required
reading for trustees, and greater cautions are in place. Let us hope
that it will not take a similar scandal to wake up to the risks of
sexual malfeasance.
By wishing to be tender in all circumstances, by
avoiding confrontation, and by being so assured of our own
superiority over wider society in these matters, we fail to properly
confront and prevent behaviours that we cannot accept. By being too
“understanding” we fail to understand the situation and the
problems.
So what do we do about it? Well, I can't offer you
a recipe. For sure I'm no expert in this, and I would be dubious
about the authority of any man claiming to be. Women will have more
of value to contribute in terms of lessons, but any given woman won't
have perfect understanding of every dimension and complication of
these issues. The internet, especially social media, are full of
women, and a few men, offering advice to individuals on how better to
support women and push back against problematic attitudes and even
low-grade harassment and abuse, and it would serve little purpose for
me to repeat those here. Not only are they easy to find, they are
aimed at individuals, and I'm talking about what we do as Quaker
Meetings. While that is made up of individual actions, we also need
to have coherent corporate and organisational actions. We need to
talk to one another and learn from one another, and we need to bring
these issues to air in the clear light of day.
What I can say is this. Don't feel secure that you
are enlightened and wouldn't tolerate such behaviour, much less
perpetrate it; you can't be secure in that without understanding the
issues and constantly challenging yourself. Don't feel secure that
the Spirit will guide us on paths that prevent such problems, or that
it will show us how to deal with them when they arise; you would not
trust the Spirit to show you how to comply with charity regulations,
or to perform surgery, and this is at that level of complexity and
need for understanding. Do come together to talk about this, to think
about it, to work on it as a community. Do take advantage of those
who have expertise, knowledge and experience to offer. Do learn from
those who have suffered from harassment and abuse if they are willing
to share their experience. Do believe women. Don't be scared to try
and deal with these problems – it will be hard, but not as hard as
where we will end up if we do not deal with them. Don't think it
could never happen here, that Quakers are immune from such behaviour,
that we are somehow so much better that such unpleasantness is
unthinkable.
Be faithful. Be Friends. And always remember that
we are all still human.
