So you’re angry — now what?
After reading my piece on righteous anger, several people (e.g. ash) have asked me — now that they’re all riled up about these injustices, just as I urged them to be, what are they supposed to do about it?
First and for the record, I need to make the well-worn point that it is not the job of marginalized people to educate would-be allies. Nor is a concrete ten-year plan a prerequisite to pointing out injustice. The first step to progress is realizing change is necessary, and caring enough to do something about it. If what I wrote made you mad, I already consider it a success.
But ok, fine, since y’all asked so nicely. Here are my suggestions about what you can do to fix the problems I described. Fair warning — you may not like them all.
For a large number of these problems, the best solutions are through legislation and other government action.
Domestic violence and sexual assault need to be more rigorously investigated and prosecuted. Discriminatory school dress codes should be found unconstitutional. Restrictive abortion laws should be struck down (some of that is already happening, and more is hopefully coming soon). Equal pay can be required by legislation or regulation, as can transparency to monitor whether it is working. The EEOC can establish better procedures to deal with and encourage sexual harassment complaints. The tampon tax can be abolished, and probably soon will be. Mass incarceration can be fixed by changing drug laws and allowing more investigation into racial bias in policing. Disparate treatment of public school students based on race can be fixed with class action lawsuits and/or regulatory investigation. Procedures can be put in place to investigate and prosecute social media harassment.
What can individuals do to assist with legal and governmental solutions?
- Vote. Vote for candidates (not just presidential but legislative and even local) who support these policies. Vote against your economic interests if you have to.
- Call your senator or representative, write op-eds to your local paper, and otherwise communicate that as a constituent, that you care about these issues. Say you will not support a candidate who does not make women’s rights and lives a priority. And mean it.
- Put your money where your mouth is. Donate to advocacy, lobbying, and direct services organizations that work on these issues. (e.g. Planned Parenthood, ACLU, Her Justice, Legal Aid). If you are lucky enough to have a lot of money to donate, do it publicly and without apology or qualification. Tell everyone you are making a large donation because you care deeply about these issues, and explain why you care. Urge your friends and colleagues to match your donation. Make a thing of it.
But, you might say, many of the things I listed cannot be fixed through government action — rape culture, the success/likability double bind, unequal allocation of respect and responsibility in families, street harassment, etc. To fix those problems, we need a culture shift, and I will be the first to acknowledge that culture shifts are hard things to get started. But I would actually argue that we are already in the middle of a culture shift, as evidenced by the fact that we have the language to talk about these things (“rape culture,” “microaggression,” etc.) whereas these words didn’t even exist fifteen years ago.
Cultural changes take time, but more importantly, they take work. It’s not just showing up to protests and donating money and voting. Cultural change requires fundamentally and permanently altering the way you see the world, the way you talk, the way you interact with other people. Here are the ways you can start to do that:
- When you hear an allegation of sexual harassment or domestic violence, believe the victim. Resist the urge to doubt her veracity or criticize her clothing or her sexual history. Don’t tie yourself in knots trying to come up with a version of the story where it wasn’t really rape or abuse. Quit worrying about how terrible it would be for the man if it turned out to be a false accusation. Make it your knee-jerk reaction, before you hear anything else, to believe what the woman is saying. (And if you’re thinking, “but he’s innocent until proven guilty,” remember that you are not on the jury. You can believe whatever seems most plausible to you, so remind yourself that the most plausible explanation is that she’s telling the truth.)
- Don’t judge women’s character based on how they dress. I know it’s hard, because first impressions are so powerful. But do your best to break the connection between sexy clothes / sexual promiscuity / sexual availability / bad character. Remove the phrase “she’s dressed like a slut,” and all its variations, from your vocabulary. If you have kids in school, protest the sexist elements and applications of the dress code, even if your kid hasn’t (yet) been affected by it.
- Police your language — and others’ — for subtle sexism. Stop saying you got “raped” or “fucked” by a difficult work task or a large parking ticket. Don’t call your buddy a “pussy” if you think he’s not being brave. Don’t ever say, “man up.”
- Stop sitting by idly when your friends make sexist or racist jokes or say misogynistic things. Firmly escort your drunk friend away from the woman he’s hitting on, instead of laughing and waiting for her friends to rescue her. Make it known in your social circles that racists and sexists are not welcome. Yes it’s uncomfortable, but say something. Don’t let your silence after a racial slur or a sexist comment be taken as approval.
- Hire women. Treat them as valuable members of your team. Make the coffee and take the notes yourself, or ask a man to do it.
- At social events, ask men about their children and women about their jobs. Don’t ask young women when they are planning to have children. Don’t ask pregnant women when or if they are going to return to work. And for the love of God, don’t ask professional women with children how they “balance it all.”
- Don’t complain about how long it takes your wife or girlfriend to get ready in the morning, or how much money she spends on clothing and makeup. Don’t look down on women who don’t come in to work perfectly coifed every day. And really, really don’t do both at once.
- Make an effort not to teach gender norms to small children. Don’t default to asking girls to help with dishes and boys to help with shoveling. Don’t treat little girls like they’re made of glass and boys like they’re incapable of emotion. Encourage girls to learn math and boys to learn art.
- Have regular conversations with your partner about how you allocate childcare and household tasks. Make sure you do these things with intention, instead of letting “women’s work” like cooking and childcare just migrate to the woman by default. If your female partner is doing all the cooking or changing all the diapers because you don’t know how, learn.
These are my suggestions. The list is not complete or perfect, nor is it uncontroversial. But you get the idea. It boils down to this:
