Sharing my Own Privileged Dumbassery

[jimhines]

This is going to come as a tremendous shock to people, particularly my wife and children, but I am not, in fact, perfect.

When I write about things like sexism, racism, bullying, homophobia, etc. in SF/F circles or society in general, I do it because I believe it’s important. But I also do it because it’s personal, both because so many people I love and care about are directly affected by these things, and because — having grown up in this society — I’m still working on my own assumptions and behaviors.

I came across a blog post discussing the Hugo nominations. (I’m trying to avoid these discussions, because they do bad things to my brain, but that’s a mess for another post.) In this one, someone was pointing out that for the past six years, the Best Fan Writer category has had only a single female nominee each year (or in 2007, no women at all).

As I read, that privileged, sexist crap I complain about came crashing through my head. My brain was a bingo card of dumbassery.

• Wait, is she saying I only got on the ballot because I’m a guy?
• People shouldn’t vote based on gender. It should be about the writing!
• Why oh why has fandom declared War on Penises?

Okay, I’m exaggerating with that last one. The point is, my initial, gut-level response was to take it personally, and to go through some of the same reactions that piss me off when I see or hear them from others.

You know what? They piss me off when they come from me, too. Because the poster is absolutely right. There are brilliant, powerful, amazing women writing out there, and it speaks ill of us that we’re not recognizing more of them.

Nobody’s saying I only got on the ballot because I’m a guy. I don’t believe anyone looked at their Hugo ballot and said, “Well, I like Cat Valente, but Jim Hines has a Y chromosome, so I’m nominating him instead. Go Team Penis!”¹

But does the fact that I’m a guy give me an advantage? Yeah, it does. I have more freedom to write whatever I like, with less fear of backlash. I’m given more respect and authority when I write, I’m taken more seriously.

That’s not a comfortable thing for me to acknowledge. I want to believe that everything I’ve achieved has come 100% from my own inherent awesomeness … but it just ain’t so.

This doesn’t change the fact that I’m a good writer. (That’s right, I said fact! My ego blows raspberries at the haters!) It doesn’t change how honored I feel to be on that ballot. It doesn’t diminish the things I’ve achieved. What it does is start to acknowledge the reality of the context in which I’ve achieved those things, the advantages I’ve been given.

None of us are perfect, and most of us have absorbed ideas, beliefs, and attitudes that we need to work on. It’s hard, sometimes painful work to dig up and examine those beliefs, and to start to change our behaviors.

But it’s important work. And it’s work I hope and expect to be doing until the day I die.

—

1. It’s been correctly pointed out in the comments that having a penis or Y chromosome does not equal being a guy, and vice versa. It’s not that simple or straightforward. ↩

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

Comments

thanks for writing this

[legionseagle]

I hadn't seen the Cat Valente post comapring the treatment of women bloggers to the response to Chris Priest that you linked to until you linked to it, and I found it fascinating and thought-provoking and all that sort of thing. And yet, on page one, there was a comment reading in part If you're just venting to your friends on LJ, I apologize. Scalzi elevated your post to the level of social commentary when he linked to it.

And I felt physically punched in the gut, because it reminded me of all those other times I'd had people tell strong women that they only counted if a man validated them; like my history teacher at school being told she need a "male guarantor" to enter into a hire purchase agreement for a washing machine, or my law tutor at Oxford being told - by the Oxford and Cambridge club, no less - that she wasn't allowed as a "lady associate member" to borrow books from the library without a male co-signatory or a colleague being told she couldn't go out to the Middle East to negotiate a contract unless accompanied by a senior male family member.

And the one thing that helped tremendously in easing that sense of hurt, frustration and - frankly - negation (thirty five years and NOTHING has changed) was Scalzi bobbing up two comments below to ask that clown "What the fuck are you on?" and to point out he did not and could not validate ANYTHING about the essay.

Because idiots are always with us. But it's really, really helpful when those who would otherwise benefit from their idiocy push that cup away from them and make it clear they've done so.

So, thanks.

Re: thanks for writing this

[jimhines]

I know exactly what comment you mean. And yes, the one thing that made me feel a little better was how quickly people jumped on that comment to point out how problematic and sexist it really was.

I've stopped counting how many times I'll say something in a blog post which is basically just a restatement of something a woman has said, but now that I'm saying it, suddenly people start paying attention. (Some of that is due to the fact that I've got a decent-sized readership, yes ... but it happens even when the woman in question has an equivalent audience.)

Re: thanks for writing this

[legionseagle]

One of my many, many objections to "corporate team-building exercises" (of which I've had to suffer a great deal too many in my career) is that they're almost guaranteed to produce a lot of frustration for the women on the team, in that their ideas are either talked over or hijacked and any attempts by them to prevent that happening is parsed negatively within the parameters of the exercise.

Re: thanks for writing this

[jimhines]

I used to facilitate some team/group activities along those lines, and that's something a *good* facilitator is supposed to see and challenge. The whole point (okay, one point) of the activity is to help the group to see and recognize unhealthy dynamics and start to change them.

Unfortunately, a lot of the time these events are run by people with no training or understanding of what the exercise is for, no understanding of group dynamics, and no idea how to really use an activity to help a group.

Yeah, it's a button for me. I'll stop grumbling now.

Re: thanks for writing this

[legionseagle]

Grumble all you like, unless it's going to leave you punching the walls - one of my beefs is *exactly* that point about lack of skill in the people running the event - also, in the UK at least, a lot of the exercises seem to be cut down from various Army entrance/officer fitness stuff and to carry a large freight of unexamined assumptions about base level fitness, internal hierarchical structures and motivations which are very unsound; case in point, I was once on an exercise where (fortunately) our team leader was already an experienced and trained leader. He spotted that what were were being asked to do was dangerous in the conditions and with the level of fitness and training of the team he had, so came up with an extremely ingenious workaround which stretched the rules to breaking point but didn't snap them and then argued his point with the umpires so we got the marks. Another team tried it within the apparent confines of the exercise and ended up with a team member in hospital with a suspected cracked cervical vertabra.

Re: thanks for writing this

[jimhines]

Argh. Responsibility #1: keep your group members safe!

I actually enjoyed working with groups with different levels of ability or fitness. I remember in the beginning when I was getting trained and we had a group member in a wheelchair, so I asked if we should adjust the rules. The experienced person said nope -- but it forced the group to acknowledge things and figure out how to get through as a team. Our job as facilitators was to help them through that problem-solving, and to make sure everyone stayed physically and emotionally safe.

We didn't have umpires or scorecard either, which I suspect is another significant difference. And if a group failed to complete an activity, that provided some great discussion and learning opportunities too.

I loved the groups that looked for ways to bend and stretch the rules, though. The more creative, the better. Every once in a while they'd even come up with something I hadn't thought of or seen before :-)