{"id":32260,"date":"2017-02-13T01:00:36","date_gmt":"2017-02-13T06:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=32260"},"modified":"2017-02-03T10:21:56","modified_gmt":"2017-02-03T15:21:56","slug":"qotd-guilt-as-a-tool-guilt-as-a-weapon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2017\/02\/13\/qotd-guilt-as-a-tool-guilt-as-a-weapon\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Guilt as a tool, guilt as a weapon"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday I was hanging around in the kitchen with my older son, waiting for the coffee to brew, and he made some joking comment about my being oppressed when I was growing up.<\/p>\n

I told him I was oppressed enough, or at least women were, in that time and in that place \u2013 as they still are in many times and in many places.<\/p>\n

Yes, I like to point out and do \u2013 often \u2013 that it wasn\u2019t a gigantic conspiracy of men against women that kept women down for six thousand years because frankly most men can\u2019t conspire their way out of a paperbag. (I suspect women are naturally better at it. No, don\u2019t hurt me. Just women seem to be naturally more socially adept. But even women couldn\u2019t manage a conspiracy of that magnitude.) And I like to point out \u2013 and do \u2013 it wasn\u2019t shoulder to shoulder but the pill and changes in technology that liberated women or at least that made attempts at liberation reasonable instead of insane. (Of course, shoulder to shoulder makes for better movies and books, which is why everyone believes it.)<\/p>\n

However, as I told the boy, given the conditions biology set up, women were \u201coppressed\u201d enough in most cultures and in most places. Yes, men were oppressed too at the same time, because this type of shackles is double-sided, but the oppression of women lingered a bit longer than that of men \u2013 say a good couple of generations by habit and custom and because humans simply don\u2019t change that fast. Which is why the oppression of women is remembered as such and the men are remembered as being on top.<\/p>\n

So I told him in Portugal, until the seventies, women weren\u2019t allowed to vote and, oh, by the way, a married woman couldn\u2019t get a job outside the house unless her husband signed papers saying that they needed it, due to economic hardship. (Which of course, meant the dumb bastard had to sign a paper saying he wasn\u2019t man enough to support his family. Made it really easy on him, it did.) I\u2019m sure there were other legal and economic hobbles that went with that. And I told him of course in many many countries in the world that inequality persists, only much worse.<\/p>\n

Which is when I realized he was squirming and looking like he\u2019d done something wrong.<\/p>\n

Guilt. My poor kid was feeling guilty of being born male.<\/p>\n

Guilt is a useful enough emotion, in small doses and well administered. For instance when I was three I stole some very small coin from money my mom had left on the kitchen table. I don\u2019t remember what \u2013 the equivalent of five cents. I stole it to buy a couple of peanuts at the store across the street (they sold them by weight. In the shell.) My mom made it clear to me I\u2019d made it impossible for her to buy her normal bread order when the bakery delivery (no, don\u2019t ask. Delivered. Door to door. Every morning. I missed it terribly my first years in the US, but now they don\u2019t do it in Portugal either, anymore) came by the next morning because she didn\u2019t have the exact change. It wasn\u2019t strictly true. The money amount was so small she just said \u201cI\u2019ll make the rest up tomorrow.\u201d But she told me it was, and how she had to be short a roll. My understanding there were larger consequences for my stupid theft made me feel guilty, and that ensured I never did it again. The same, with varying degrees of justice, managed to instill the semblance of a work ethic in me in relation to school work.<\/p>\n

However, the guilt my son was feeling was stupid, counterproductive, all too widespread AND poisonous.<\/p>\n

Stupid because he could hardly be held accountable for something that happened thirty years before his birth, even if he has the same outward form as the people who benefitted from an inequity. (And benefitted should be taken with a grain of salt here. Countries in which women are kept down might offer an ego bo for the guys, but they are far less materially prosperous on average. Everyone suffers.) Counterproductive because guilt by definition can never be collective. Well, not beyond a small group like, say the Manson family. You get beyond that and you can\u2019t assign blame with any degree of accuracy. So, going and yelling at my father, say, for \u201ckeeping women down\u201d when I was little would be as insane as yelling at my son. Why? Well, because a) he didn\u2019t and wouldn\u2019t (he was raised by a strong woman, practically on her own, while my grandfather was in Brazil, working and grandma ruled the extended family with an iron fist.) b) to the extent he enforced societal rules, it was usually to keep us from getting in trouble with society in general (which, btw, included women. In fact women were the greatest enforcers of \u201cyou shall not be seen anywhere with a young man you\u2019re not dating\u201d rule that got me in the most trouble.) c) his standing up and talking given who he was and the amount of social power he had (or in fact didn\u2019t have) would have changed nothing except get him treated like a lunatic.<\/p>\n

Sarah Hoyt, “The Sharp Edge of Guilt, a blast from the past March 2010”, According to Hoyt<\/em><\/a>, 2015-06-05.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday I was hanging around in the kitchen with my older son, waiting for the coffee to brew, and he made some joking comment about my being oppressed when I was growing up. I told him I was oppressed enough, or at least women were, in that time and in that place \u2013 as they […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,73],"tags":[374,198,557,303,43],"class_list":["post-32260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-quotations","category-randomness","tag-children","tag-equalrights","tag-portugal","tag-sexism","tag-women"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-8ok","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32260"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32260\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32261,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32260\/revisions\/32261"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}