LABELS - The Thread!

[Faust]

Submissive behavior:
No eye contact.
Smiling in a concilatory manner or looking panicked and ducking head when feeling threatened, cringing.
Hands out of sight or brought in front of your stomach.
"Leave me alone, please."

This describes me in any social situation ever.
I always thought it was a good indicator of wanting to be left alone, just in a more quiet way. Need to think on that.

I'm like this a lot of the time, its something I consciously want to get rid of when I am at work, I think it is detrimental to how people perceive you and the work you do.

It is.

Trouble is I get nervous and feel like I'm doing something wrong even when its someone else. Not sure how to train that out of myself.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Submissive behavior:
No eye contact.
Smiling in a concilatory manner or looking panicked and ducking head when feeling threatened, cringing.
Hands out of sight or brought in front of your stomach.
"Leave me alone, please."

This describes me in any social situation ever.
I always thought it was a good indicator of wanting to be left alone, just in a more quiet way. Need to think on that.

It says "I want to be left alone, but I cannot enforce it.  I rely on your manners and good behavior."

In some situations, that's appropriate.  If there is danger present, your posture should instead say "Leave me the fuck alone or I'll ruin your night."

That would probably tie into advice that I've been given to "fake it" even if I'm not feeling it (regarding confidence).
Dealing with social situations is taking a whole lot of work to get my head around.

A better view is "fake it til you make it".

Passive < aggressive < assertive.

But you can't make it in one jump.  By the way, the easiest part is one of the most effective parts.  Knuckles forward when you walk, like an ape.  You look like you're both ready and used to trouble.  Stride, don't walk.  It looks like you're moving with a purpose, and people tend to barge through things when they have a purpose.

Also, manners can be the enemy.  If a stranger asks you for a light or for change, blow past him and CHECK BEHIND YOU.  If he's being overly nice or familiar while he's doing it, or if he advances while he does it, it's Trouble, and he has a friend nearby.  Behind you.

So what do you do when there's Trouble?  There's a limited number of options.  The BEST option is to be prepared in advance (the classes Cain referred to are priceless, not for technique, but for reaction).

However, lacking that:

1.  SHOUT, do not scream.  Bellow out a challenge, lean forward.
2.  If you cannot run, attack.  Do not defend.  Trouble counts on you pretending that nothing is wrong.
3.  Mace.  Lots and lots of mace.  Aim for the forehead, not the eyes.

 

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Submissive behavior:
No eye contact.
Smiling in a concilatory manner or looking panicked and ducking head when feeling threatened, cringing.
Hands out of sight or brought in front of your stomach.
"Leave me alone, please."

This describes me in any social situation ever.
I always thought it was a good indicator of wanting to be left alone, just in a more quiet way. Need to think on that.

I'm like this a lot of the time, its something I consciously want to get rid of when I am at work, I think it is detrimental to how people perceive you and the work you do.

It is.

Trouble is I get nervous and feel like I'm doing something wrong even when its someone else. Not sure how to train that out of myself.

Re-read The Schoedinger's Cat trilogy.  Pay attention to the narrator, not the dialogue.

[P3nT4gR4m]

whether is a serial rapist or just the office bully, they're not looking for a challenge, they're looking for a victim. Whether or not they can articulate how it works, most people speak fluent body-language. It's rooted in a much older set of neural pathways than verbal communication and is a lot more powerful because of that.

Learning the rules of assertive body language and then actually changing to using it will actually make you feel more confident. Your brain follows you're body's message. Stand up straight, shoulders back, head upright, look people in the eye. If you want to up the ante - move into their personal space, lean forward, maintain eye contact, smirk.

Of course if it gets to that stage it's a good idea to have some ass kicking skills to back that up 

[The Good Reverend Roger]

whether is a serial rapist or just the office bully, they're not looking for a challenge, they're looking for a victim. Whether or not they can articulate how it works, most people speak fluent body-language. It's rooted in a much older set of neural pathways than verbal communication and is a lot more powerful because of that.

Learning the rules of assertive body language and then actually changing to using it will actually make you feel more confident. Your brain follows you're body's message. Stand up straight, shoulders back, head upright, look people in the eye. If you want to up the ante - move into their personal space, lean forward, maintain eye contact, smirk.

Of course if it gets to that stage it's a good idea to have some ass kicking skills to back that up 

But that's almost never actually necessary, because as you say, they're looking for labels that say  "easy mark".

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

And I don't intend to harp on the subject, Garbo, but let's just turn that around.

I'm 43 and sitting in a bar with my friends Roscoe (35) and Anthony (25).  Someone else walks into the bar, so we look at who entered (I sure as hell am).  It turns out to be a young lady.  I give a friendly smile, and turn back to my conversation.  She scoots for a corner table like I was about to attack her on the spot.

I don't know what's going through her head, but I'm wondering what the hell I did wrong.  I was just being polite.  I would have done the same exact thing if it had been a 60 year old man who walked in.

Another example, this one happened recently:

I'm walking out of Barnes & Noble, to my car in the parking lot.  A 50-ish Black man is about 20 feet ahead of me, dressed like a lawyer or a doctor on his day off.  He's carrying a bag of books in each hand.  As he walks toward his car, passes by a lady waiting in her SUV...Who hits all the door locks as he goes past the front of her vehicle.  It's fairly quiet in the parking lot, and even I can hear the sound, even though I'm a good 30 feet away.  I start laughing fit to split a gut.  The guy looks back at me and chuckles, with the "what can you say?" look on his face.  He then walks past her car, loads his books in the trunk, and departs.

Did she hit the locks because he was a man?  Or because he was a Black man?  I don't know (though in Oro Valley, I can make a pretty good guess), but I know what the guy was thinking, based on the look on his face. 



Now, I'm not saying to stop being cautious.  I am NOT by any means saying there aren't a bunch of creepers out there.  What I AM saying is that caution is a good thing, but outright fear is something to be conquered.  99% of the time, the people you are worried about would be honestly puzzled as to why.

The other half of that is that, given a situation in which creepers are actually present, the other 1% of the time, a visible fear response is a really, really bad thing.  It's what the predator type is scanning for.  Replace the fear with anger.

Lastly, okay, so you're a good-looking younger woman in a bar.  You're getting the leer.  What do?

1.  Look him in the eye, snort derisively, go back to what you were doing.  The "snorting derisively" thing is the important bit, because you're acting dismissive, which puts you in the powerful position, which isn't what creepers are looking for.  He'll find someone else to hassle.

2.  If a situation becomes physical, or even seriously LOOKS like it's about to become physical, be the first to react.  Shout, don't scream (anger & threat posture, not fear response)...And advance, don't cringe.  Mace the piss out of the guy, if he actually attempts to touch you.  Or just glass the bastard¹.  Most crimes occur to people who A)  Look like a victim and B) Fail to react because they can't get it through their head that something is actually happening.  The jackass is kind of counting on that.




¹  I suggest this one.  Even the smallest fist is credible if there's a rock in it.  A beer stein is even better.  DO NOT ATTEMPT TO BREAK THE BOTTLE OR GLASS FIRST UNLESS YOU KNOW HOW TO DO IT, or the ER nurse will be fishing bits of glass out of your hand for hours.

I can attest to the effectiveness of this I don't even KNOW how many times over. 

And I want to add that if he even LOOKS like wanting to come at you for fucking up his face (which is RARE, 99.99% of the time they're just shocked) OTHER PEOPLE IN THAT BAR, INCLUDING HIS OWN FRIENDS, WILL GRAB HIS ASS AND PULL HIM AWAY. BEFORE HE DOES ANYTHING.

There are reasons for this. Some people are decent and don't want to see a woman smacked around. Some people are assholes and won't want to see the creeper go to jail. Some people will be trying to make brownie points with the barender and/or owner, (alkies like being in with bartenders and bar owners, there's an occsional free drink in it) who doesn't want to risk getting shut down. Some people are tryingto be your knight in shining armor, which you may not want, but these types aren't often grabby.

I know a secret - you're usually safer in a bar than you are in your own home, if you live alone or the people you live with are away. The real danger of bars is people FOLLOWING you home.

[Anna Mae Bollocks]

Submissive behavior:
No eye contact.
Smiling in a concilatory manner or looking panicked and ducking head when feeling threatened, cringing.
Hands out of sight or brought in front of your stomach.
"Leave me alone, please."

This describes me in any social situation ever.
I always thought it was a good indicator of wanting to be left alone, just in a more quiet way. Need to think on that.

It says "I want to be left alone, but I cannot enforce it.  I rely on your manners and good behavior."

In some situations, that's appropriate.  If there is danger present, your posture should instead say "Leave me the fuck alone or I'll ruin your night."

Sita, that's being a sitting duck.
http://www.principiadiscordia.com/forum/index.php/topic,32930.msg1196220.html#msg1196220

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

The point is that you HAVE boxes you didn't have to search for years for; they were given to you and that's a privilege some people don't have. You didn't spend years struggling with a vital part your identity in the same way some people, myself among them, did.

No.  Just every single day of my life since 1996.  Doesn't count, I suppose. 

Does count. It's not something I was aware of.

And that is EXACTLY what I am talking about.  In the other thread, Faust just made a statement about how "nobody here has ever been oppressed", because we all have one form of privilege or another.  And BOTH of you are FULL OF SHIT.  Oppression and privilege are in no way connected, except that privilege makes oppressing other people slightly easier.

Your identity problems are based on cis/trans whatever.  Mine are based on something grimmer and far more basic, but MY issues in no way invalidate YOUR issues, and the other way around.  You live with the fear of rape and being seconded based on your sex and gender orientation, and I live with a 16 ton weight on my conscience.

You look at men walking by, and worry that they may have designs on your body.  I look at people walking by, and worry that they might suddenly point and shout "PARIAH!  KILLER!  MURDERER!  FUCKING ANIMAL!"  Both are at the same time reasonable and paranoid.  Both are still very real fears.

To claim that one is greater than the other is to claim that it's okay to be hanged, if they use a golden rope.

I'm late to this party, but I wanted to say that this is completely spot-on. Oppression and privilege are not mutually exclusive, and they come in a multitude of types, none of which invalidate the others.

One of the things that has led me in the direction I'm going in is the question of why, when I've had so many shitty things happen in my life, I came out of it relatively OK. Why is it that so many other people have had similar setbacks, and either turned into shitty people or were just unable to pull themselves out of it? Part of the answer comes down to privilege. Privileges I have that I am aware of: Both my parents are highly educated, I was raised with a keen awareness of my own intelligence, and although I was raised in poverty, my family background is not impoverished, so I had expectations of a different lifestyle; I was not raised within the cycle of despair. I was taught how to budget, garden, and cook at a very early age, and about nutrition and the importance of exercise. My parents were athletic.

So when I look at someone who I KNOW could do as well for themselves as I have, when it is tempting to despise their weakness (and it IS tempting; I am a human being, and human beings tend to do that) I try to remind myself that I am viewing them through the filters of MY privilege, and I need to step back and recognize those filters, and see what I have been granted as a matter of privilege that she hasn't been granted. Otherwise I run the risk of allowing myself to oppress her further, from my position of privilege, by invalidating her.

Roger, in terms of your oppression, I don't know what it's like to walk around with that weight on me. I can have sympathetic understanding for it, but god willing I will never have empathetic understanding of it. And honestly, I don't want you to ever have empathetic understanding of mine. I would rather nobody did.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I'm asking this here because it deals with labels (I think at least) and I'm genuinely wanting to learn.

I've never really understood the whole "I'm a X in a Y's body" thing. My mind just doesn't see thoughts and feelings and actions as something that is male or female. It's just something that makes us human.

So, why does someone say they are not what their sex/gender* show? Is it based strictly on what society says you should act and think like based on your sex/gender? Or is it something else?


*These two have always meant the same thing to me, but I can see that they seem to have different meanings for other people. Don't understand that either.

Actually, I think it's more that they don't FEEL like the gender they were born with.  My daughter is in this catagory.  It has nothing to do with sexual orientation in the classic sense of the term, or in society's expectations, it's that she would have much rather had a male body.

I felt that way as a child and young woman, but in my middle adulthood came to realize that my feeling was mostly a reaction to cultural gender expectations. It's not just that I wanted to have a penis; it's that I wanted to be treated and viewed the way people with penises were treated and viewed.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I actually don't have a problem with labels provided the function is not to reduce a person to nothing but a label.

I think there are some legitimate reasons for labels;

To better know ones self. By coming across a label that fits me, it gives me a chance to understand myself better. This was my experience with the myerbriggs test, finding my type listed as INTP. Reading the description, it was the first time I actually understood that I wasnt socially incompetent. I'm sure that coming across a label that describes ones quirks or compulsions and provides a community of people who have experienced similar things, is helpful to many, including those with uncommon inclinations in gender or sexuality.

To form tribal connections. Either informally (a Discordian hanging with Discordians) or formally (official groups or associations) labelling oneself as part of a larger group as a social signifier.

To attract desired attention or behaviour. Easiest example is if I put straight, bi or gay on a dating profile.

To compress complex ideas. While my views on any issue may be complex, and not easily summed up by any label, I can call myself feminist, left-leaning, objectivist, deist our any other label if I want to quickly convey a set of complex or time intensive ideas in one word. This also givs these idea sets greater spreadability.

The key point for me is that labels can help if you use them, not if you let them use you, not if you become them.

We also can't help categorizing things. It's a human being thing; a fundamental survival trait. They key is to accept the categorizations, AND to think past them. Our brains instantly, automatically categorize absolutely everything that we experience. Sometimes we categorize wrong and have to adjust later. This happens constantly, thousands of millions of time every day; it's the only way our brains are free to think about things that are personally important. We are only having these conversations now because our brains are automatically categorizing everything going on in our immediate surroundings, and will automatically alert us if something falls into the category "potentially dangerous".

Everybody is already labeling everyone else all the time, and we can't stop. What we can do is consciously think past labels, when we have the time and opportunity to think. We can't make everyone else do so as well, but we can do what we're doing, which is talk about it to make it more likely that other people will pick up the idea (another thing  that human beings do naturally and automatically) and spread it around some more.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Labels are unavoidable. It's how the human brain is wired to think. Without labels we'd be dribbling on our shoes and crossing our eyes constantly and we'd never learn anything.

However, labels are also a trap. Labels acquire connotations. When a label acquires enough connotations it becomes a pidgeonhole. It becomes a prison (for both the labeller and the labelee) It becomes a tool of oppression and/or a wedge between the subject and understanding.

This is true not only of labels we apply to our fellow primates but of all labels. Labels for inanimate objects. Labels for abstract systems. Labels for pretty much fucking anything.

Here's how it works. Once upon a time someone invented a label to describe these funky new people they'd discovered. These people were a different colour from the people who discovered them. "holy fuck!" said the bold explorers "these people are different from us. Quick, we need a label"

So they called them "Niggers"

At the point where they did this they had no preconceptions of what a "nigger" actually was. The term merely meant dark coloured people. It was later that the label took on a life of it's own. I probably don't have to explain what happened next but I'd like to point out that what did happen next was the pitfall of labels.

It eventually got so bad that most of the human race (even Richard Pryor, FFS) realised that it was getting us nowhere so, in a godlike display of making the same mistake over and over, we decided to replace the label with "people of colour"

Genius! Because of course it was the spelling that caused all the problems in the first place.

Prediction - 20 years from now calling someone a "person of colour" will be just as bad as calling them a nigger - you heard it here first.

So yeah, use labels, you can't help it but what you can help is to always look behind the labels. Don't get tied up in them. Work out for yourself when it's appropriate to apply them and when it's retarded.

If you don't then you're going to become a bigot and, because labels are so fucking insidious when they're working against you, you'll be utterly blind to this fact and everybody will be laughing at you behind your back on account of the "Asshole" label

Hah, if I'd read further on I'd have seen that you already said what I just said. 

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Creepy, scary behavior from older men has happened to me for years (like, close to a decade). I don't think I'm excessively out of line when it comes to being anxious about them and outside of being around lots of older men by myself, I am not a particularly anxious person. Although I do admit some of it is probably overly paranoid since I do have some fucked up brain chemistry and I do tend to make plans to deal with the worst. It's sort of my nature.


I also realize this probably compromises some of my general validity. *shrug* I seem to be doing a lot of that lately

When you've actually had bad shit happen to you, it does increase your anxiety when you're in a similar situation. Yeah, it might be "in your head" but it's still real, and still a symptom of a fucked-up society in which bad shit can easily happen to a woman just because she's female, and other people will sit around and watch it happen and then blame you for it afterward.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Try this:

Here's my thought process from Wednesday night, when I beat my friend A and her boyfriend to the bar:

- by myself, female, and young (+1 wariness, +1 to anxiety)

Moving to a well-lit public space (-1 Wariness, -1 to anxiety)

- A bunch of older men are on the patio, which is between me and the actual bar. The youngest of these men was maybe 35. (Men between 35 and 60 are the ones who actually scare me, since the most disrespectful, degrading, and downright terrifying advances* I have ever endured have been from this age bracket, since men my age are either more subtle or don't make a move at all) (+4 to anxiety)


Passed by a group of potential witnesses/ support if I get in trouble (-4 to anxiety)

-- most of these men turn to look at me as I scan the situation (+2 to anxiety because, again, men in this age bracket are fucking scary)

They react to my presence. Good - this means they are biologically alive and conscious. This will help if I need their assitance for any reason (-2 to anxiety)

--- there is a creeper already leering at me (+1 to wariness)

One of them is attracted to me. Too bad, I'm out of his league and he knows it but he makes a show in front of his friends as some pathetic attempt to save face. (+1 to ego)

- *Checks clothing* *concludes nothing can be construed as "asking for it"* (+0 to anxiety)

Check reflection in door window - yup, I'm hawt!  (+2 to ego)

- No one, especially another female, is in the actual bar (+2 to anxiety)

Bar is empty. Result -  I'm first in the queue!


- The only back way out that won't set off an alarm is in the club attached to the bar, which I would have to go toward the front of the bar and therefore toward these men to get to. Said exit leads me to an alleyway, which is not a good thing. Bathrooms do not guarantee refuge in the event I need it. (+4 to anxiety)

Two doors leading in, I sit in the corner so I have an eye on both. All the glassware and possibly a baseball bat and/or shotgun behind the bar. If anything kicks off in this empty place then that's where I'm headed. Sitrep: Area secure. (-4 to anxiety)

- If I go in, by myself, and a guy follows me in and gets grabby (a possibility I have to account for and I have already dealt with a similar situation once), I have absolutely no backup (+1 to FML)
- If I go in by myself and a guy gets grabby, I'll be told "Why were you in a bar full of guys? Don't you know any better?" (+1 to FML)

Check bag - Can of mace! Something out the ordinary goes down I should have it covered

Total:
2 wariness
14 anxiety
2 FML

Total:
-1 wariness
-11 anxiety
+3 ego

-- all I did was change the labels and swap proactive for paranoid

You do realize that what this is, EXACTLY what it is, is a discussion of how the woman should change her behavior and thinking so she's less scared, rather then a discussion of how society should change so that women have less reason to be scared, right?

[The Good Reverend Roger]

The point is that you HAVE boxes you didn't have to search for years for; they were given to you and that's a privilege some people don't have. You didn't spend years struggling with a vital part your identity in the same way some people, myself among them, did.

No.  Just every single day of my life since 1996.  Doesn't count, I suppose. 

Does count. It's not something I was aware of.

And that is EXACTLY what I am talking about.  In the other thread, Faust just made a statement about how "nobody here has ever been oppressed", because we all have one form of privilege or another.  And BOTH of you are FULL OF SHIT.  Oppression and privilege are in no way connected, except that privilege makes oppressing other people slightly easier.

Your identity problems are based on cis/trans whatever.  Mine are based on something grimmer and far more basic, but MY issues in no way invalidate YOUR issues, and the other way around.  You live with the fear of rape and being seconded based on your sex and gender orientation, and I live with a 16 ton weight on my conscience.

You look at men walking by, and worry that they may have designs on your body.  I look at people walking by, and worry that they might suddenly point and shout "PARIAH!  KILLER!  MURDERER!  FUCKING ANIMAL!"  Both are at the same time reasonable and paranoid.  Both are still very real fears.

To claim that one is greater than the other is to claim that it's okay to be hanged, if they use a golden rope.

I'm late to this party, but I wanted to say that this is completely spot-on. Oppression and privilege are not mutually exclusive, and they come in a multitude of types, none of which invalidate the others.

One of the things that has led me in the direction I'm going in is the question of why, when I've had so many shitty things happen in my life, I came out of it relatively OK. Why is it that so many other people have had similar setbacks, and either turned into shitty people or were just unable to pull themselves out of it? Part of the answer comes down to privilege. Privileges I have that I am aware of: Both my parents are highly educated, I was raised with a keen awareness of my own intelligence, and although I was raised in poverty, my family background is not impoverished, so I had expectations of a different lifestyle; I was not raised within the cycle of despair. I was taught how to budget, garden, and cook at a very early age, and about nutrition and the importance of exercise. My parents were athletic.

So when I look at someone who I KNOW could do as well for themselves as I have, when it is tempting to despise their weakness (and it IS tempting; I am a human being, and human beings tend to do that) I try to remind myself that I am viewing them through the filters of MY privilege, and I need to step back and recognize those filters, and see what I have been granted as a matter of privilege that she hasn't been granted. Otherwise I run the risk of allowing myself to oppress her further, from my position of privilege, by invalidating her.

Roger, in terms of your oppression, I don't know what it's like to walk around with that weight on me. I can have sympathetic understanding for it, but god willing I will never have empathetic understanding of it. And honestly, I don't want you to ever have empathetic understanding of mine. I would rather nobody did.

And THAT is something I can live with, as the definitive statement of "answers coming from privilege."

[The Good Reverend Roger]

When you've actually had bad shit happen to you, it does increase your anxiety when you're in a similar situation. Yeah, it might be "in your head" but it's still real, and still a symptom of a fucked-up society in which bad shit can easily happen to a woman just because she's female, and other people will sit around and watch it happen and then blame you for it afterward.

There is no doubt about the truth of this. 

You do realize that what this is, EXACTLY what it is, is a discussion of how the woman should change her behavior and thinking so she's less scared, rather then a discussion of how society should change so that women have less reason to be scared, right?

Well, we DO live in The World As It Is, not The World We Wish We Had.  So while we should work towards the world we wish we had, it is still important to remain sane and alive in the world we actually have at the moment.

You can't live in fear all the time and remain sane.  You can't rely on safety gained merely by demanding it.

What is required is individual strength.  Strength of character, strength of nerve, and the strength with which to defend yourself to the best of your ability, should it become necessary.  One of society's most insidious labels is the "woman in need of a defender", when the woman should look to her own defense FIRST, before considering the possibility of some "white knight" coming to the rescue.  Women CAN do this, because women are strong as fuck when they're not conditioned out of it, despite the difference in body mass and upper body strength between the average male & female.

Carry a rock in your fist, figuratively or literally, and you've solved The Fear and the issue of physical safety.

I'm not an expert on anthropology or anything, but I think you'll find that strong people will make the world we wish we had.