Tag: equality

Newton’s First Law of Motion

Newton’s first law of motion: an object in motion, will stay in motion unless acted on by another force. In other words, something in motion will only change its speed or direction, if something else causes it to do so.

I feel like the western world has been so caught up in financial recessions, terrorism, reality TV, and pantomime politics, all of which has been learnt about through social media, that they have forgotten to interact with one another with any rigour or power. We have forgotten how to talk about anything that’s really in front of us.

That’s where the flutter comes in, the churn in your stomach, the little voice that tells you to ‘just leave it’. I have felt that so many times over the last few months in my journey to not leave anything alone. But that’s where the change happens. Face to face, looking a person in the eye. I’m not facing down oppressors, the police or the government; I’m simply telling a friend or a colleague an alternative to the phrase they just used. If all it does is make them watch their words around me, I’ve changed someone’s motion and awareness of what is acceptable.

I saw a picture of a woman (on social media) who had squirted water on a man-spreader’s crotch. A brief glance at the comments showed some strong opinions on either side of the argument, but my only thought was ‘good, someone acting against something they care about’. I feel like we need to see more of this. There are protests and petitions galore at the moment but actual action is hard to come by. I am guilty myself, I claim that ‘life gets in the way’, but that’s the whole problem isn’t it.

So when I was reminded of Newton’s first law of motion, it made me think. It takes something bumping into us, physically or metaphorically, for us to change our motion. It takes someone you know speaking out, finding your own ceiling of bullshit or being personally affected to change your motion.

I feel like so many of us have fallen into a passive existence. An existence where we feel we can make a difference online, hiding away in social media, not interacting for fear of bumping into each other and having our motion changed. It’s like the world has recently woken up to the fact that we treat each other like shit. When we look up and around we realise that in our absence, no one has been making a difference.

So it seems that more and more people have been taking a stand over the last year or so. So many movements and slogans pushing us forward into potentially a better world. What true power do they have unless we reset our norms? What impact can they have if we get bored of hearing the same slogans 6 months later? If something’s worth saying, it’s worth saying until it’s heard.

Well sorry, not sorry to those who are sick of hearing it, the eye-rollers, because I’m going to keep repeating myself and standing up until I change enough people’s motions; until I see a world where equality reigns. 

PACE – it’s the way forward!

I ended up sitting in a conference listening to an expert talk about PACE this week. I ignored my ego telling me to leave because I know it all. I’m glad I did this because something I realised while he was talking is that this little-known ‘attitude’ is probably what could fix the divides between humans. A big statement, I know.

Sit down, with a cup of whatever makes you feel cozy and stick with me here.

So for those of you who don’t know, PACE is an attitude developed by Dan Hughes, that teachers, social workers, parents and therapeutic services use for children and young people with a traumatic background. These children and young people have developed attachment difficulties and so to put it simply, their brains have been wired differently to those who had a secure attachment in early life. To begin to rewire and therapeutically reach these children and young people, we need to take a different approach, which is PACE. Now bear with me.

PACE stands for Playful, Accepting, Curious and Empathetic. These are the attitudes you need to use when interacting with these traumatized individuals, all the time and forever. In other words, you don’t judge their behaviour, their words or their reactions; you accept it. You empathise and get curious about why they are doing those things and what makes them tick. And as often as possible you keep things light and playful, without sarcasm or shaming.

I will tell you from personal experience that it’s hard to do all the time. My parenting and teaching programming overrides my attitude sometimes but I reign it back in because the outcome is amazing.

Imagine a world where every person you encountered listened to you, empathised with you, accepted what you said and kept things light? Just take a moment to think about your interactions, now. With your boss, partner, bank manager. How would they differ?

As I sat there listening to the man give examples, I thought, what if; what if everyone applied the attitude to everyone, not just the traumatized? It wouldn’t harm anyone to feel accepted no matter what, or to feel listened to, to feel like you can have fun and be light-hearted with the people in your life. As an adult, that may seem overly simplistic but it also sounds pretty lovely to me. Imagine meeting people where they’re at and having an honest conversation because you know they will meet you where you’re at. What a difference!
So I stand by my original statement: if everyone could have a PACE attitude towards anyone, there would simply be less judgement, less fear, fewer lies, less boasting and bullshit. If everyone could accept each other’s truths, that would go a fucking long way to eradicating hate too.

PACE – it’s the way forward!

To learn more about PACE and Dan Hughes: http://www.danielhughes.org/about.html

Representation

Representation is a reoccurring theme in my week. Being a British white female, this hadn’t been a personal issue or was even in my sphere of awareness really when growing up.

The first time I was made explicitly aware was when my first class had been selected to be on the cover photo of some educational document and the head teacher asked me to “Make sure I picked a ‘mixture’ of children”. Now to be fair this was a completely multi-cultural multi-faith mainstream London school with no ethnic majority and there was only one white British child in my class. So, honestly no matter who I picked it was going to ‘be a mixture’. It would have been significantly harder to purposefully pick a group that looked the same.  But this was the first time I had selected children based on their appearance and it felt uncomfortable.

What I have learnt since about representation is that choosing that ‘mixture’ was a really important message for every child that saw that front cover. I was naive to think that these images do not have an impact and that making that decision was in some way wrong. I guess coming from my well-represented situation, I had never considered the responsibility of those behind the camera to ensure everyone has a voice and a familiar face to represent them. I found that exact publication recently and those memories flooded back of unity and harmony within a diverse community – well, as much as any group of kids anyway!

Now I live in the middle of the countryside where there is very little diversity, which I still find very unsettling. I feel the need to ensure my children remain as colour-blind as they were born. We seek out opportunities to entrench and celebrate diversity as often as we can. However, what can a non-famous white female do about representation? How do you promote equality on this sphere? Especially without making people or things tokenistic.

The actions I can take seem simplistic and small: ensuring my children see all different people within the tv shows they watch, we celebrate Diwali and Chinese New Year as well as Christmas, the books we buy have a spectrum of hero’s. We recently bought the picture book of ‘Long walk to freedom’ by Nelson Mandela to highlight the struggle faced in South Africa. Our kids loved the story and spot pictures of Nelson (first name terms now!) everywhere. There were some really amazing observations and discussions with our small children about this.

I know we don’t need to suffer or be subjugated to stand up for what is right, but how do you make people aware and intolerant of the imbalance represented without highlighting ethnicity tokenistically?

The quota system in South African sports has been a source of contention for a long time. The strongest of people refusing selection if they felt it was due to the colour of their skin, not based purely on talent. But the system is there for a very good reason. By ensuring that the best of the best who are representing the country, represent the whole country, in theory that should encourage schools and colleges to do the same. Hopefully making the representation, or ‘mixture’ as I was told, explicit leads to a more natural and implicit representation in the future.

Argentina v South Africa - The Rugby Championship
So what can I do, especially in a non-diverse community, to develop an entrenched sense of equality?

Within my work this week I was looking into Dyslexia awareness week through the British Dyslexia Association to find out what the themes are that we could celebrate this year. As I was sending out an email with my expectations for the week to my colleagues, I realised it had taken a tone of justification. As if I should be justifying why the teachers should use their time to do this.

It then occurred to me that this was also about representation. Even if it’s only for one week a year that dyslexia is highlighted and understood, the knock-on effect for children’s self-esteem and self-worth, their view of themselves as a learner and their place in the world could be immense. (So I rewrote the email and everyone is on board!)

dyslexia
If one week of heightened awareness could have this impact, imagine the impact of purposefully ensuring diversity in the literature they read, in the heroes we present and the way we speak about others could have!

Maybe there is more I could do and I hope the opportunity arises, but for now I will continue to purposefully promote equality in diversity in all the little ways I can.

Links
Facebook tells me that one year ago, I posted this link! Nice coincidence, really but he explains the current situation more powerfully than I can: https://m.facebook.com/Channel4News/videos/10154616232846939/   There is the full version on Youtube too.

Here’s a link for those of you in education: https://www.blackhistorymonth.org.uk/

Bellyache

“Don’t get sucked into the darkness,” I told my husband as if I had it all under control myself. This week We have both gotten into online arguments with the ignorant. It took a toll on my spirit and patience.

I tried to keep my arguments concise, specific and factful but that’s not how the other half argue is it! Who needs fact when you have fear-mongering and hatred!? Who needs to read and respond when you can spew whatever crap you heard some dangerous doctor in Canada spew? But the ignorant and dangerous aren’t the issue here.

I used to feel that these fearful people on social media shouldn’t be engaged with as they are antagonising for the sake of it so you can’t win. You can’t change the mind of someone who can find a problem for every solution.

But then I read a quote by Martin Luther King jr:
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hatred cannot drive out hatred, only love can do that”.

I take this to mean a great deal of things, one of which is how we chose to face opposition determines the outcome of the venture. If you chose to insult, berate and belittle you cannot drive out hate and change minds but if you always keep love first and foremost, then you stand a chance. This is all well a good until you’re faced with a moron telling you that there is no gender pay gap.

There must be people to provide light out there in the darkness of social media and who better than the generation who’s lives do not revolve around social media? Who better to be role models than those of us who know this is all virtual.
IMG_4905 (1)
Thank you pinterest for this image.

I think that those on the side of good are reluctant to feel how I have felt this week. And I don’t blame them. Managing work, motherhood and being a partner to my husband are all significantly harder with anger in your gut. But I might have changed someone else’s heart – not the person I was arguing with but someone else who read it. That makes a difference. It’s vague and reward-less but it’s some light in the dark.

I will learn to process and release this frustration that builds up into anger. But I must remember all of those who have been through a lot worse than belly ache and sleeplessness to make change happen. Michelle Obama believes that history shows that one spark of hope can spread quickly enough to make change happen. We have to organise ourselves better, so I urge you this week, to stand up against and argue with something wrong. It might make your gut twist but you might just change a heart.

‘For girls’

My eldest son came home from school a few months back proclaiming certain tv shows, games and what-not to be ‘girl things’.

Now, given that most of his friends are girls, his male friends also have long hair like him and his favourite tv shows were Care Bears and Luna Petunia, I was struggling to figure this out!

I guess I had naively thought that gender equality would filter into him by osmosis. That he would view the world differently through his side-swept bangs, stay-at-home Dad and working mother. He would know that what others classed as normal, we were throwing out the window.

But no, he’s 5 and his friends views and phrases hold more weight than mine.

So I was very chilled out in explaining that there’s no such thing as boy games or girl games. 6 times. 6 times I was super chilled and explained it as carefully as I could.

The seventh occasion involved scrolling for a tv show on Netflix and hearing, ‘Urg, that’s a girl show’. I may not have had the same chilled out tone in my repetition this time and I may have gone a little over the top listing every show he likes and every game he plays that are technically ‘for girls’, in quite possibly an irate tone of voice. The answer I got was, ‘oh’ and he hasn’t mentioned it since. Personally, I think finding out that She-Ra is a ‘girl show’ was the clincher in making him throw out the whole idea, not me.

In the end, I learnt not to expect my kids to innately understand gender equality through what they see in their family, as the world has many more contradicting examples than we could possibly compete with. This is too important to leave to chance, this must be taught in everything we do and addressed head on when needed.

So I will curb the irate tone and be prepared for whatever comes next, all the while setting and highlighting positive examples where I can.

Negative distribution

As I have reflected on my own thoughts and views of women, men, restrictions and equality, I have realised that many of the moments in the mirror – the self-doubt – sound an awful lot like the words of some women I have known.

Friends who have had distinct views on men and relationships have influenced me and shaped my thoughts at different times in my life. We are all surrounded by each others views all the time, especially now that we can give them from across the world. Even when you don’t agree with a view, it still has the ability to stick with you years on. One woman I knew viewed men as a tool who were not allowed to get too close; the other would bend and mound herself to what the stranger, aka potential husband, might possibly expect of her. When the relationship went south, one would blame the men for whatever slight she could remember and the other would blame herself for whatever ‘crime against perfection’ she could find in the mirror.

Here’s the clincher, both women were confident, funny, talented and beautiful, which they knew…until a man entered their lives. The patriarchal programming was jarring to me at the time and sickens me in retrospect.

I was once told by one of these ‘friends’: “if you don’t wax your arse, he’ll never want to stick his dick in it”. As if it was my responsibility to remove hair I didn’t know I had, just in case a guy I had just met wanted anal sex. My response was along the lines of it being ‘his problem’ but the shock from the depth of that statement has rung with me for a long time. The implication that if a man doesn’t want to have any kind of sex with me that it must be my fault! That something as natural as body hair could make me unattractive! That my appearance could be such a turn off after I had wooed them with my personality and wit!

In my darkest moments, I felt naïve that I had underestimated the aesthetic appeal, that I was a joke for thinking I could ‘compete with beauty’. However my façade, and now my darkest voice too, calls bullshit! My dad’s last argument against my first tattoo was ‘what if you meet a man who doesn’t like tattoos’, to which I responded ‘well I won’t like him very much either, so he’s obviously not the man for me!’  I stand by that. If you don’t like me for how I am, fuck off. I am not contorting, waxing, plucking, starving myself for anyone. I like me. I am funny, interesting, clever and strong, whether my legs are hairy or not. No “double agent for the patriarchy” (J Jamil, 2018) is going to tell me otherwise.

So I guess my point is that I am now much more critical when listening to well-meaning advice. For generations upon generations, we have been programmed by the patriarchy but at least if we can be aware of it and censor the programming from being redistributed from our mouths to other women, we stand a chance of evolving.

Read more about female body image: Planting seeds