"We Should All Be Feminists" - A Takeaway

I was fortunate to be a part of this morning's "Coffee @ the Commons" panel and consequent conversation at the University of Kansas. The three of us examined in which ways our research intersects with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Ted Talk and book, We Should All Be Feminists. The following reflects what I said this morning:

I study the construction of whiteness, masculinity, and at the moment David Mamet. I am fascinated when Mamet takes the traditional sympathetic role of the central character and places, not anti-heroes, but unsympathetic and deplorable (misogynistic, homophobic, bigoted, and racist) characters in these roles. I feel more than slighted when his expectation of the audience is to sympathize with the loss of identity these characters face. 

Now I do not want to misplace my thoughts that were formed in Germany and the United States onto Nigeria and this talk. Having said that, there are striking similarities to the West that seem to exist in Adichie's book. It comes down to what I want to call 'assumed whiteness'. Over the years, promises have been made to certain groups of people. To white people: if you show up, clock your hours, and feed your family, you will be rewarded with respect, a paycheck, and perhaps a pension. As Adichie mentions, if you are a man in Nigeria, you will be rewarded with the ability to control your family’s money and the agency of women. Even in 4th-grade, it is boys who are granted the position of the class monitor, whether they want it or not, because only boys are allowed to have that position.

When these “promises” no longer occur, whether they are legitimate promises that speak to a middle-class way of life or messed-up and deranged promises that shame and police women, bad things happen. Anger often results. We know that scholars have been writing about the fragile state of American Masculinity, particularly white masculinity, as it chooses to engage in mass-shootings. Even the Munich McDonald’s rampage that left 10 people dead this July appears to point to a kind of masculinity in crisis. Terrorism was ruled out, but instead, it appears the shooter had “an intensive interest” in school shootings as newspaper articles and a book about school shootings was found in the suspect’s bedroom. So what's going on here?

There must exist strategies for dismantling the systems that seek to control and withhold agency from women. Adichie writes, “If we do something over and over again, it becomes normal. If we see the same thing over and over again, it becomes normal. If only boys are made class monitor, then at some point we will all think, even if unconsciously, that the class monitor has to be a boy.” Creating a new normal is the mandate. But this sounds difficult. How are men supposed to speak out, as Adichie writes, "in all of these ostensibly small situations" when we're dealing with "well-meaning", well-intentioned, nice people? How do we speak up when our friends and family do not realize the matrix of unconsciousness they are a part of? How do we help bring those we love to a place of consciousness so that they too can see how what they once thought was unconscious is rooted in something strategic, intentional, and deplorable? 

David Mamet asks us to sympathize with angry, white men. But what does the angry, white man have to lose if we withhold sympathy? We need to embrace solutions that go beyond post-bombing our Facebook friends lists and discover ways to pull aside our friends and family when they speak and behave in ways that serve to breathe life into the old, tired, systematic, once intentional/still intentional ways of shaming and policing women. Moving forward, I am interested in finding ways to speak to the unconscious components of white, American masculinity on the American and German stage so that we can make it conscious, visible, and no longer unmarked. I am seeking strategies for replacing the anger white men feel when they perceive to be losing and replace it with a gratitude for additional, diverse voices at the table... a gratitude that understands strength is what results through a diversity of perspectives and not the end of their masculinity.

Adichie's original Ted Talk can be found here.