Geraldine Doyle

Geraldine Doyle died last week at the age of 86. She was the inspiration for the "Rosie the Riveter" poster which proudly proclaimed that We Can Do It. Yes, that one:

Image description: A young White woman flexing her right arm and looking determined. She is wearing a blue factory work shirt, her hair is covered in a red bandanna with white dots. There is a blue speech bubble above her head with the words "We Can Do It!".

And here's Ms Doyle in the 1940s:

Image description: a young White woman is shown leaning over what appears to be a piece of factory machinery. She is wearing a light-coloured factory work clothes, and her hair is tied up and covered with a polka-doted bandanna.

The poster was initially used to recruit women to war service during WWII, and soon became an image of the Women's Movement -- symbolising women's strength, and determination. It's one I've loved for it's positive focus on what women can, and do contribute.

Her obituary in the Washington Post contains this paragraph:

While many people profited off the "Rosie the Riveter" image, Mrs. Doyle often said she never made a penny from it because she was too busy tending to her family and "changing diapers all the time."

I hope the irony is not lost on anyone.

Raise hell, Ms Doyle.

Hat tip: Melissa McEwan at Shakesville.

--IP

Is it safe to pee?

Most people take it for granted that the places they live, work, study, go out for a meal or a drink at, go out to for fun, will all have working toilets they can use safely. Most people have no idea what it is like not to take that for granted.

There was the time when the only toilet I could use in my department building was out of service for four months.

There were the times the lifts were out of service, and I couldn't get to the toilets in the building I had class in.

There are all the cafes and bars that are just fine if all you want is to get in the door and order a drink. In fact, you could spend all evening there. So long as you never need the loo, because it's down a flight of stairs. No lift. No toilet on the ground floor.

There were all the times I wanted to meet up with other people, or take a child in my care for a day out, and couldn't because there was no baby changing at the place we were due to go, and the kid I look after is still in nappies.

There were all the times I took a disabled kid to a park, or some other venue, and we had to leave, because the kid uses nappies, and there was no disabled changing, and the kid is too big to use fold-down baby changing stations.

Here's what I've never experienced: being harassed for using the loo. I don't know what that's like.

Here's what I do know: there are few things so soul-sucking and humiliating as explaining to your teachers, your work supervisors, and other people around you, that you cannot use the toilet in the places you live, work, study, go out to. It sucks. It really sucks. And it's disruptive to your working day, decreases your working productivity, and does a number on your mental health.

Who is most affected by a lack of accessible toilet facilities?

• Trans people. People who do not conform to the gender labels on bathroom doors, and who are forced to use the wrong toilets by institutional policy, prejudice, and fear of harassment if they use the right toilet.


• Disabled people and their caregivers. People who can't get to bathrooms that are not accessible, or who need certain facilities that many places currently do not stock. Their caregivers are also affected if their movement depends largely on that of the disabled person.


• Children and their caregivers. People who need changing facilities, and people who need to take the children with them.

If you've never experienced it, and you can't quite imagine it, try this: try not going to the toilet, ever, except in your own home. (Some people who live in student halls, for example, may not have suitable bathroom arrangements where they live, but that's advanced empathy practice). At no point during your working day, or during any outing, may you use the toilet. But try this for a limited period of time. I don't wish long term patriarchal bullshit on anyone, not even for empathy practice.

So when I'm told about projects like Safe2Pee
, it breaks my heart. But it also makes me glad to know that there are folks I can campaign with. Watch this space. Campaigns for a safer campus are coming to a toilet near you.

--IP

great things to do with gaga.

I love that they even have a flashmob brass band. Made my day. Go San Francisco.

Fair pay?

I've been meaning to write about men and patriarchy on here for a wee while, and then Kate and an anonymous commenter started an interesting dialogue on Kate's post, so it was a good push in the right direction.

This is not a post about the Telegraph. This is not a post "defending" feminism. This is also not a post about saying who has it "worse". This is a post about the often-heard cry of "What about the men? The patriarchy hurts men too!" that I shall refer to as PHMT.

Let's take the example of equal pay. Equal pay for equal work. It's been feminist orthodoxy for longer than I care to think about, with the rationale that work is (equally worthy) work, whoever is doing it.

It's certainly the case that there is a gender-based trend with regard to certain work being unpaid or underpaid. This is a feminist concern.

It's also the case that not all the work that is underpaid is work done traditionally by women. There are a whole bunch of hard, skilled, boring, or dangerous jobs out there that are done predominantly by blue-collar men. Often: non-White men. Often: immigrant men. Often: working-class men.

For sure, I don't want to be paid less than my male co-workers for doing the same job: it's just not fair.

I also don't want the same shitty National Minimum below-the-breadline wage as the bloke next to me on [some basically shitty job]. My work is work. His work is work. We should both be able to put roofs over our heads and food on our tables. If we can't, that's also not fair. I also happen to think it's not fair that some people have to work basically shitty jobs.

So fair pay, to my mind, means something more than just saying "I want same number of pounds sterling per hour as the men I work with". It means "we all get fair pay". It means we have to re-think how the money is distributed and how the work is distributed. It means we have to re-think what fair means. "The same for men and women" is part of it, but not all of it.

The patriarchy does hurt men too, in lots of ways. (Lack of) Fair pay is just one way, and we can say that and also, at the same time, say that there is a specific problem with discrimination against women in pay and employment.

But PHMT is a problem feminism needs to take seriously. If for no other reason than that the Fair Pay Problem shows that men's liberation (and antiracism, anti-xenophobia, and anti-classism) are part and parcel of women's liberation.

--IP

Oh markedness, you insidious thing

Over at Language Log, Geoffrey Pullum writes about the phrase "practitioner of diversity":

It seemed fairly clear to Jan (and I think she's right) that of diversity here means something like "belonging to one of the formerly excluded groups associated with references to diversity such as women, Hispanics, African Americans, etc." — it's analogous to the common meaning of the phrase of color in phrases like person of color.

I'm leaving aside the issue of whether "practitioner" here means a practitioner of law or a human resources -type person who is supposed to run diversity-enhancing programs, because, well, I leave that sort of stuff to Language Log. And regardless of whether "of diversity" indicates the individual's demographics or not, it's quite clear that "equality and diversity" programs concern themselves primarily with institutional practices that disproportionately affect women, certain racial groups, disabled people, queer/LGBT people, and other groups who are traditionally underprivileged or underrepresented in certain spheres. That is, there's something about "diversity" that does mean "not White dudes", more or less as GKP suggested in his post.

At this point, I must affix my linguistics hat firmly to my head. There. Now we can proceed.

Very roughly, linguists say that something is linguistically marked when it is atypical for a particular speaker or context. Linguists also sometimes talk about marked identities. Roughly, these means identities that are atypical relative to a given (usually, ideologically-laden) context.

For example, compare:

1. That person is an scientist.


2. That Black woman is an scientist

One might reasonably ask why one might chose to say (2) rather than (1) in a context where both are relevant. Moreover, is less likely to say "That White man is a scientist". So we say that, in many contexts, being a Black woman is a marked identity.

Still with me? Good.

There's certainly very good arguments for saying that "people of diversity" suggests that diversity is a characteristic only of marked identities. This is the sort of attitude that is in place when people remark on the "weirdness" of intersectionality in marked identities -- for example being, a queer disabled Hispanic woman -- but they think it's totally "normal" to be a straight White non-disabled man. Having an attitude towards Black people, women, and other underprivileged groups such that one considers them to be Other (and therefore marked) makes them more oppressed, not less.

GKP writes:

I'm not even saying there is no role or motivation for a phrase like person of diversity. It is apparently intended to pick out people who are not white European or Jewish males.

Indeed (she says, leaving aside the mention of Jewish men at this point, because although I can see what is intended, there actually are some interesting issues there). And this too is problematic, because it defines people in relation to White (straight, non-disabled, etc) men. It's White-centric and andro-centric.

But to say that white European or Jewish males will be barred from some job or actively dispreferred for it sounds raw and ugly in its exclusionariness: one could hardly defend it against a charge of racial and gender discrimination. A positive word or phrase is needed for the class of people who are thought to merit help from diversity-enhancement programs. Hence the coining of a phrase to denote such people. It makes perfect sense. Especially to someone like me who has never been an opponent of affirmative action or diversity enhancement programs.

Trying to unpack what GKP is saying here: it sounds to me like he is saying that an affirmative action program for "people of diversity" sounds too close to "a program to increase the recruitment of people who are not White men", and that this comes too close to gender/racial discrimination.

It seems to me that this is a simplistic account. For one thing, this argument has always been made against affirmative action by countless people, whatever the terminology. I really doesn't matter if the wording is "a program to increase the recruitment of women", because the objection to that will be be "but that's discrimination against men!" (Note, I don't propose to go into a thorough discussion of affirmative action here. That's a whole 'nother post.)

But secondly, GKP's comments miss out the markedness issue entirely. The claim is "'people of diversity' doesn't include White men, and it is therefore difficult to defend the term against a charge of racism". But it seems to me that the people harmed by the exclusion of White men are not White men at all — it's everyone who isn't a White man, precisely because they are all being considered Other, and White men are being considered Normal. This is what markedness means. If we were to say "we are starting a new program to recruit more people" we'd have no reason to think that "people" means "White men", except for the fact that whenever we mean anyone other than White men, we call it "diversity" or "affirmative action" or "discrimination against White men". White men don't seem to need a special label — it's everyone else who needs the special "diversity" label.

So yes, the markedness here is deeply harmful. But not to White men, who seem to be doing pretty well out of it.

--IP

[Cross-posted]