Protected Classes, Harassment, and Singing to the Choir

[lydy]

An organization with which I am involved (Minnesota Science Fiction Society) is in the throes of developing an anti-harassment policy. This is a good thing, hard work, and well, subject to the usual stress. I wrote this for an email discussion, and decided to drop it here, as well, in case you aren't following that particular discussion. I realize it isn't anything that hasn't been said before.

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Someone, I don't remember who as I deleted the email, said something about the harassment policy existing for "protected classes." While I realize that almost everybody understand that this is, in fact nonsense, and that there is a very high likelihood that the person who said it isn't interested in why this is not the case, I thought I'd give it a go, anyway. After all, it's 4 a.m., I can't go to bed yet, and what the hell.

The protected class is actually people. All people. People, as it turns out, come with a number of characteristics. There is a long history of making fun of, harassing, or otherwise belittling certain normal human characteristics. The most common are gender, race, ethnicity (those two actually being basically the same thing), religion, and sexual orientation. Trans is somewhat more recent on the list because the whole option of transitioning genders in public where people can see is a relatively (as in, just barely within my lifetime) deal.

I think that one of the reasons people talk about "protected classes" when this comes up is because they misunderstand something. It is a type of reading incomprehension. I believe it was Samuel Delaney who first talked about the "unmarked state". In our culture, unless otherwise identified, people are assumed to be male, white, heterosexual, cis-gendered, and usually protestant. So when a policy prohibits harassment based on gender, race, sexual orientation, etc., I believe that people accidentally misread this as "female, black, gay, trans, and religion-I-don't-practice." Because the other simply, you know, goes without saying. If you say gender, what they hear is "female" and perhaps even more importantly, "not me."

In point of fact, the harassment policy totally also prevents people from harassing people for being white, for being male, for being straight, or for any other basic human characteristic. Properly written, it also leaves a room for addressing harassment that doesn't fall under the laundry list of most likely things. If someone develops a seriously prejudicial attitude towards people whose names are David, if someone habitually says negative things about the sexual proclivities, reliability, desirablity, and general worthiness of someone named David, the policy should allow us to address that. And most policies do.

The reason the laundry list exists is an important one. These are the specific characteristics which have a serious historical context. These are the characteristics that have been very commonly used to denigrate and make miserable other human beings. Also, it is important to note that we, as a culture and a sub-culture, are attempting to address and change a situation which has a great deal of historical inertia. It has often been the case that this kind of behavior was at minimum tolerated, and at maximum encouraged by our culture and community. Policies like these are a tool in attempting to change and correct old wrongs. By specifically citing these particular issues, we are acknowledging that there is a specific problem here, that we know about it, and are trying to fix it. And this is a good thing.

People. They should get to be people without being hassled for being who they are. And that totally includes you, whoever you are. This is not about protected classes. You, too, are a protected class.
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Comments

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I'd put "disability" into that list of common things.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

Damn, I knew I was missing something. Absolutely, it goes there. And I think it's in our nascent policy, too. But, you know, it was four in the morning and I was lazy and didn't look.

Sorry, you are right, and overlooking it says not good things about my understanding of the problem.

[quadong.livejournal.com]

Preamble: Of course I agree with your point as a whole.

That said, without going back and looking at the context, I assume that the person who said "protected class" used that phrase because it's a technical term in federal law. Unlike the policy we're trying to write, those laws do protect specific classes of people. I'm not sure why you assume that he isn't interested in knowing why it doesn't apply here. Since I do remember who said it, I'm of the opinion that he is more receptive than you're assuming.

Besides your reasons, we would also not want to use the phrase "protected class" is because there is a fixed list of such classes under federal law and we certainly don't want to say that it's ok to harass people for having some characteristic not in that list.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

I may well be suffering from a failure of reading comprehension, as well. Since I had deleted the email, I couldn't go back and look at it more carefully, and was responding partly from a long-standing annoyance on the topic. There is a certain class of argument about "protected classes" which is roughly the same argument as "letting gay people get married is giving them special treatment." Feh on that.

I did not get the sense that the term protected class was being used in a technical sense. But, again, I may have failed in reading comprehension, here.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

In point of fact, the harassment policy totally also prevents people from harassing people for being white, for being male, for being straight, or for any other basic human characteristic

Well, it should do that. In my experience, it ain't necessarily so. I've observed too many advocates of one or another group's rights casually, even gleefully, attack and mob others verbally for their presumed privilege (which is presumed as a function of their sex, race, ethnicity, religion, or orientation), and act as if this behavior is justified *because* of the privilege being inferred. At best it's hypocritical and often it's outright nasty. It isn't enough to have a policy that de jure covers everybody if a het WASP male gets laughed out of court and mocked when he submits a complaint under the policy. And that can easily, easily happen if the people who enforce it don't remember that it's not their job to exact vengeance for somebody else's oppression.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

You know, I haven't actually seen this. I have certainly had people report this, usually second hand. It is not part of my personal experience. What is a part of my personal experience is people getting hassled and harassed for some basic characteristic of theirs, and then having incredible trouble getting the community and/or officials to help them deal with the situation. As a general rule, these have been women, but that makes sense given my social milieu.

The other thing that is part of my personal experience is people, almost always men, who find that any discussion of either harassment of minorities, or the existence of privilege, to be the equivalent of an attack on them. Often, they treat it as a personal attack on them. Any attempt to discuss structural issues of sexism, racism, and poverty seem to trigger a certain number of people into insisting that the entire point of the conversation is to take things away from them.

Finally, I have also noticed a weird thing prevalent in both Fundamentalist Christian sub-cultures and in the farther right wing reaches of the political rhetoric in this country where the fact of oppression appears to parse to those people as privilege. This explains, I think, some of the weirder "conservative" humor which by most standards seems to punch down, to make fun of and taunt the less fortunate. In fact, I think that they think they are punching up because they see the fact (or perhaps, the acknowledgement) of oppression as a form of power or privilege. At least, again, I think this is what I'm seeing. It's sufficiently odd and strange that this is a theory under review and I could be completely off base, here.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

Hmm, in thinking about this some more, maybe I do have an example of what you're talking about.

I have a male friend who is being abused by his wife. In recent interactions with the cops, they failed to take any of the reasonable precautions they in all most likelihood would have taken if the genders had been reversed. They completely failed to take note of the fact that she was physically restraining him, for instance. In general, it has been more difficult to get useful, helpful support from various bureaucracies because of the gender of the abused. On the other hand, what little I know of what it's like to be female in that situation doesn't suggest that it's a cakewalk for a woman, either.

[timprov.livejournal.com]

The other thing that is part of my personal experience is people, almost always men, who find that any discussion of either harassment of minorities, or the existence of privilege, to be the equivalent of an attack on them. Often, they treat it as a personal attack on them. Any attempt to discuss structural issues of sexism, racism, and poverty seem to trigger a certain number of people into insisting that the entire point of the conversation is to take things away from them.

I've certainly seen goodwill discussion, but I would say it has an aspect of attacking well more than half the time. For instance, the bit I quoted boils down to "I don't see how you're being attacked/diminished/denied so therefore you aren't," which is something we're often criticized for doing but it's always open season for doing it to us.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I was trying to limit my claims to things that I am personally aware of, without claiming that other things do not happen and do not exist. What I see, what I encounter, is obviously limited by my gender and social milieu, so I am going to not see things.

I have an awful lot of experience with men telling me that they have experienced discrimination, but who are unable to describe a specific situation, or end up describing a situation that happened to a friend of a friend... and not a lot of experience with men who have actually had this happen to them personally. So I am more skeptical than perhaps I should be. If you're comfortable with trying to discuss this, and are willing to do the work, I'd be very interested in hearing about your experiences, and in any insights you have as to how to have these discussions so that they don't end up attacking people of good will. I understand that you are not required to do the work for me, and am not demanding that you fix me. But if you're comfortable with the discussion, I am interested in the things you have to say.

[timprov.livejournal.com]

Twitter's a good way to see that every day, or search anywhere you like for the word "mansplaining."

But OK, easy recent personal example:

I've been going to the zoo a whole lot lately, cause, baby tapir. There are a lot of kids at the zoo with their parents, and the tapir exhibit has a play area on one side and the tropical fish on the other, so there are quite a few loose little kids, and a surprising number of them come up and start conversations with me, mostly because they're interested in cameras and the idea that some grownup can stand around taking pictures of animals all day. Mostly this is fine and we talk for a minute and they go away, or their parents notice and apologize for their kid bothering me. (And I find that idea baffling.)

But about once a week some parent completely freaks out and treats the situation like their kid has jumped into the tiger cage. They do it Minnesotan-like, so they're trying their best not to make a scene, but obviously this guy with the scraggly beard who has nothing better to do at ten o'clock on a Wednesday morning than smile at their kid and talk about cameras and tapirs is Up To No Good and they have to get their kid away as fast as possible.

This happens in pretty much any situation where I'm interacting with a kid. It used to happen more, but over the years I've put a lot of effort into non-threatening, open body language, and having the camera helps with the parents' perception that I'm actually there for something. (At least for little kids. For parents of teenagers it can make it worse.) Also, my dad is really, really good at this, and I've learned from him.

This is pretty minor, but being treated like a threat is painful, and when it happens over and over again it can be really destructive. I'll think about whether I want to make a post about the more difficult personal examples, and how racism and sexism have sabotaged friendships and romantic relationships for me. I'm not going to do that on open LJ though.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

For years I have seen this kind of thing -- the assumption that a man cannot have natural interactions with strange kids -- and thought it sucks. I have a male friend who really likes little kids and was brilliant with Z when Z was a kid, and he applied to train to work in day care and was strongly discouraged to the point of having his application lost. (Britain, 1990s.) I hate this, and always have, because I see how destructive it is for the adult but it's also bad for the kids and for society that those connections can't be there. The kids who didn't get to have the conversations with you are suffering from it, though they don't know how.

Recently, in the last two or three years, I've had this kind of reaction myself -- a couple of times at the Biodome, and once with a neighbour refusing to let her kid play on my balcony with another neighbour's kid I was minding at the time. I think I may have crossed an age barrier from "clearly a mom, safe" to "maybe a witch, scary".

[lydy.livejournal.com]

Painful and destructive. I couldn't agree more. I am sorry that this happens to you.

This is part and parcel of trying to parse the world in gender-essentialist terms. Women are nurturing, men are predators. Such incredibly, horrible nonsense.

I am currently contemplating exactly what the term harassment means, and if this is harassment. It is clearly prejudice. It is clearly wrong.

[timprov.livejournal.com]

Yes, this. I've lost track of the number of times I've been told that it's not possible to be racist or sexist against me. That's very much the standard response.

[jiawen]

The protected class is almost never "trans"; it's almost always "gender identity or expression", because those things are much broader than being trans. Many people who are not trans are discriminated against for their gender expression, for example.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

Thank you. That's a useful and obviously more accurate and complete description. My best defense here is that I was writing late at night. That's what I've got.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

I generally agree with what you've written.

I understand the why of this intellectually--that is, I have read and heard plenty about the forces behind it--but I cannot grasp it when it involves anyone who is not clinically sociopathic:The universe has so many ways of hurting and killing us puny little humans that it sometimes takes all we can muster just to survive: WHY do we also do these things to each other?

[apostle-of-eris.livejournal.com]

(Hmm. I still don't know why I sometimes get the "new" comments thing with no headline or preview . . .)
I don't get it.

I've been getting all the mailing list stuff about instituting formal harassment policies, but I do not understand the quantity of conversation, or the point of most of it. The top level governing authority, the board, decrees There Will Be Policies; the relevant con committees say, Here's out policy, the Board says Alright then.
Yes, crafting the policy is a bit challenging, but it hasn't even gotten there yet!
Is this one of the nutso dark sides of Minnesota Nice I've been unaware of?

[lydy.livejournal.com]

You are probably missing the context of the previous discussion on the Minicon concom mailing list. Not to mention, you know, lots of people have been involved in this discussion in many different venues, and their frustrations become cumulative. I agree that the conversation on the mailing list had a lot more heat than light, and I found some of this to be very confusing. It is clearing out, though. I do think that almost everyone involved is of good will. But in between a mix of different personal styles, the typical dynamics of conversations in email, and the fact that this is just generally a very touch subject, it gets a little weird out there.

[mle292.livejournal.com]

Dammit. I'm gonna be the only one to disagree. Okay, here goes.

I discriminate against people all the time. I take it as a point of pride to discriminate against car drivers who try to merge in from 394 to 94 at the last second because they didn't want to wait in the line like the rest of us, but I'll let a commercial vehicle (like a city bus or a truck) in, because I know that's the way they have to drive to meet their schedules. If I disagree with an opinion, I will listen, discuss and consider the other point-of-view, but I will actively denigrate the opinions people who blather about free speech, but believe that free speech means they have the right to not be criticized. And, of course, People who are shitty to service workers will be excluded from my social plans because they can't be allowed to interact with polite society.

Of course, I shouldn't do these things when I'm acting on behalf of someone else, on on behalf of an organization - people should be allowed to represent their own opinions, and organizational leadership should be allowed to decide what discrimination they feel is acceptable.

Organizations can discriminate, too. An organization can host an event for people interested in scrapbooking, and exclude the person who has no interest in scrapbooking but only shows up for the free snacks and beer.

BUT, organizations that get tax benefits under the claim that they provide a public benefit are not and should not be allowed to discriminate against people who have any reasonable grounds to attend. When people are excluded, it is often on the basis of a protected class, or even an unprotected class that should be protected from discrimination (any race, any religion, any gender identity...). That is the point of defining discrimination at an organizational level.

[mle292.livejournal.com]

To add to this, an organization can and should sometimes discriminate on the basis of a protected class.

For example - A nonprofit support group for teens who want to talk about healthy sexuality is not guilty of any wrongdoing for excluding parents (on the basis of age). BUT, there needs to be a credible reason.

Edited to add: ...and there my awesome writing skillz are set. I completely forgot any thesis statement in that apparent ramble.

I mean to say that not all classifications are protected.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

Ok, I can't tell if this is an honest mistake or a willful one, but really, there's a significant, substantive difference between discrimination and harassment. The topic under discussion is harassment.

As for your rant on discrimination, you are attempting to conflate making judgments and being prejudiced. They aren't the same thing. It can sometimes be difficult to tell the difference. If your experiences with, say, young black men, has largely been in contexts where they were loud and threatening, then you tend to develop a flinch reaction which you will argue is entirely a judgment based on experience. However, it is very possible that what is really going on is confirmation bias instead. When you noticed young black men, it was in the contexts in which you felt threatened. In contexts where you did not feel threatened, you didn't notice that there were young black men in attendance. I use this example in particular because it is one I have personally had a problem with and am working on.

Prejudice is worth noting, understanding, and fighting because it prevents perfectly normal people from being able to function in society in normal, happy, reasonable ways. Their choices are constricted because of a characteristic which should, in fact, be irrelevant. In general, I am in favor or more choice and more happiness in the world.

Moreover, there is a difference between not being all things to all people and discrimination. Mnstf is a science fiction club. We aren't, particularly, a scrap booking club. In general, we do things that interest us, many but not all of which are at least tangentially related to science fiction -- and gaming, which socially acts as a subset in our milieu. However, if we decided to try to exclude people because they scrap book, rather than failing to offer support for their scrap booking hobby, that would be unacceptable.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

Yes. Discrimination and prejudice are two different things. Might one say that prejudice is a subset of discrimination, in that it is discriminating against people on a basis that has nothing to do with a purpose for which one might validly discriminate? I'm not sure; just throwing that out there.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

I think that we instantly get into the fact that the word "discrimination" actually means two different things. And there is a strong tendency for both trolls and people of good will to derail conversations by conflating the two. To discriminate can mean to make fine judgments, to observe and distinguish between like things. However, when talking about law or many ways in which people act towards each other, discrimination then means enacting prejudice. And while the former is an important part of daily life, the latter is, well, also often an important part of people's daily life, but also a fight worth fighting.

[mle292.livejournal.com]

Ok, I can't tell if this is an honest mistake or a willful one, but really, there's a significant, substantive difference between discrimination and harassment. The topic under discussion is harassment.

Ohai!

Sorry about that, this was tangentially related to another discussion entirely, I had drawn parallels and was thinking about the two together a lot, and I was not paying enough attention.

Also, I am remarkably daft sometimes.

Here, have a picture of Hello Kitty enjoying some spring rolls.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

Like the spring rolls, don't like Hello Kitty.

I did also try to address what you were talking about, even though it wasn't what I was talking about. I'm willing to continue that discussion, as well, since discrimination and prejudice are certainly linked to harassment.

[mle292.livejournal.com]

I'd like to avoid derailing from your perfectly good topic if I can. On the tangent, I do think there's a pretty big difference between prejudice and discrimination, and one that's important enough to recognize in individual dealings. I never used any form of the word "prejudice."

[lydy.livejournal.com]

How do you distinguish between discrimination and prejudice. In the usual colloquial use of the term discrimination, it seems to me to mean the enacting of prejudice. I assume you see it differently.

[mle292.livejournal.com]

Prejudice is a decision made before (indicated by the "pre"), Discrimination is a decision made during or after.

To use in a sentence - One can train one's palate to discriminate between regions in which wine grapes are grown.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

Seems to me that you are attempting to exclude from the discussion a perfectly normal and current use of the word discrimination, and I'm not sure what you think you are accomplishing with this. It is common and reasonable to talk about "discrimination in the workplace" meaning not hiring, or not promoting, people based on characteristics such as gender, race, etc. This is clearly prejudice in action, and not the fine distinction of like things. The word means both. What is your goal in attempting to exclude this common meaning from the discussion?

[mle292.livejournal.com]

I have no such goal. As I've already said, my original post was in error. As I've also said, this discussion is tangential.

Have a nice day.