When policing and belonging are cultural.
I just read @susanne's post The Crap I Put Up With Because I'm a Girl in IT, and recommend it.
Her story made me think of many others I've heard from a variety of perspectives and it occurred to me that every single one of us has, in some light or other, been mistaken for someone we are not and sometimes in fairly insulting ways.
Everyone gets stereotyped and everyone makes sometimes bogus guesses and assumptions about others. But before I get to my hippy-dippy conclusion that we should all be as cool about it as @susanne, and be willing to talk about it causally with a healthy sense of humor, I want to share what I know about #culture shock and argue that so many kinds of social tension are well-described as happening on a cultural rather than personal level.
I'm what's known as a third culture kid, meaning that I grew up in two or more countries other than that of my citizenship or family heritage. I've experienced all the classic types of culture shock many times. I bet you have, too.
There are four generally recognized kinds of culture shock
Classic: You look like you don't belong and you don't.
Maybe you're a tourist or a sojourner or an ex-pat. The defining part is that you are somewhere totally new to you and it's obvious to everyone and you aren't happy about it. Think of any first day in your life. It's possible you have experienced some degree of classic culture shock.
Outcast: You look like you don't belong, but do
My friend Tim had grown up mostly in Japan with his Japanese mother. He was white and had always gone to the American school but he was fluent in Japanese and familiar with culture codes and courtesies, though he would likely always have a hard time being recognized and treated as Japanese. Can you imagine what that must be like? To know you may always have to struggle to be recognized by the culture you live in because of how you look? Actually, I bet you know exactly what it's like. @susanne does.
False Mirror: You look like you belong, but don't.
Another friend, also named Tim, was an American from North Carolina, but had Korean heritage. Preposterously, many Japanese took him for definitely 100% born and raised Japanese, something he in no way was. When my friends all met at the movies and put our jackets on the seats to reserve them while we milled about obnoxiously in the aisles offending everyone half on-purpose in that dickish way teenagers have, Tim got a talking to in a way that the rest of us, including the fluent half-Japanese Tim never had and never would. Can you imagine what that must be like? To have arrived in a new country and not speak the language and to be constantly bitched out in words you don't understand by people who are sure you should know better? I bet you have..it's just that that new country was your sister's friends or some other insular place or group with its own culture or set of rules. False Mirror Culture Shock happens when normal cultural policing is misplaced. I'm sure you can think of cases where a sub-culture over-extended its identity and tried to police you as part of itself when you simply weren't inside its jurisdiction.
Reverse Culture Shock: You used to belong and look like you belong, but no longer feel that you do.
I admit to bristling a little at the term "Reverse Culture Shock" which means the shock of returning to one's home culture after having lived abroad. I want to say the reason I bristle is because the term seems to suggest that there are only two types and makes it harder to explain. But let's be honest, I'm probably just suffering from it. I experienced reverse culture shock visiting my old high school after college, as I hear is common. There were lots of people I recognized and a lot of them recognized me and wanted me in their lives, but I just didn't feel like that was possible anymore. How could I explain what I'd experienced? Who I'd become?
But to the point and my stated topic of political correctness and being unintentionally rude...
Recently, a couple of my friends (both TCK women) got into a mildly heated conversation on facebook. One said that she was sick of seeing the bikini plus duck face look and wondered why these girls seemed to have so little self-respect. Another friend was upset by the implication that women should be chastised for choice of self-presentation and argued that everyone should stop commenting on women's clothing, entirely. So...one person vents an age-old disgust at the skeeziness of youth and another says not even to do that, because each of us is responsible for shaping society and a society intolerant of the awful music and the provocative clothing is ignorant of it's own generation-blindness and should chuckle at itself for being fuddy-dud. I am not opening that conversation here. I am pointing out what I perceive to be a stale-mate, a non-issue, a situation where taking sides and deciding who's wrong and who's right would make a big deal out of what is only cultural tension. I'll get there, but here's the stalemate:
On one hand
I recently watched the Teal Swan video on Political Correctness that @stellabelle shared as part of her post How I Made USD12,000 in One Month on Steemit, which is a good read, if you haven't. The video is good, too. Teal Swan makes the case that
"Being politically correct does nothing to address the real issues that political correctness is supposed to address. It allows everyone to be covertly prejudiced and covertly stereotype, while condemning anyone else who does."
But @susanne (thank you for continuing to be my example of how to do this) is wise enough not to demand to be spared the crap of being stereotyped. She doesn't explicitly ask for political correctness. I assume it's for the same reason that my friend didn't actually approach the bikini girls making duck faces and tell them to grow some self-respect. Just venting is a normal and intelligent response to a clash whether personal or cultural.
Classic venting styles involve making the "can you believe that?" face, drinking and ranting at strangers (less advisable), talking to friends, writing, or just jogging or dancing or otherwise literally shaking it off. When one is venting, it's not actually judging, it's just asking to be allowed to puff out some heat. It's important that people be allowed to vent, even if it sounds bigoted or otherwise obnoxious, because as Teal Swan says
"You know what happens when stuff gets driven underground. It just starts to fester."
I can agree. I bet forbidding certain topics would have no other effect than for those views to surface in more self-righteous ways, likely more unconscious and forceful ways.
There is social value in us hearing stories like @susanne's, which are true and laughable and describe frictive places. As each of us becomes more aware of the possibility to look like an idiot by mistaking the doctor for the nurse or any other classic guess based on stereotypes and personal history, we check ourselves instead of wrecking ourselves, mostly just being more alert, more respectful, less knee-jerk and assuming.
On the other hand,
telling someone they have to stop being obnoxious is sometimes necessary. It's not necessary when you don't like their clothes, but it starts to feel necessary when you don't like the way they are shaming or otherwise infringing on the rights of someone else. Political correctness isn't as new as the word.
Judgement calls about what is obnoxious and whether or not it is okay to a) say so or b) tell the person to change their behavior are rooted in culture codes.
Who's duty it is to speak to children running free in a store? Who is considered the authoritative voice on a topic? Who is allowed to stand up for who? Even what is acceptable to say and with what words are all strongly suggested to us by the cultures and sub-cultures we adopt consciously or otherwise find ourselves in.
My friend who wants people to just stop talking about women's clothing, already,is calling for political correctness. Beauty standards vary widely around the world and while there is undeniable beauty in every single one of us, it's unlikely that everyone everywhere will ever agree on the superficial details. Nor should they. She's calling for open-mindedness in the name of decency and from a desire to protect. She's also venting.
Her aim is social engineering. If no one comments about what women wear, then the culture that currently shames and rapes will be altered at the level of code, I believe is the gist. I'm sure I'm not doing the argument justice because I don't believe in social engineering, but that's not far off. Policing behavior, which is what enforcement of political correctness is, is one way culture maintains its integrity.
One friend sees bikinis and duck face and her cultural code alarm goes off. She feels the impulse to police, but chooses to vent. Another friend witnesses the venting, views it as policing and polices it. Her cultural code alarm has gone off as well. What has happened? Nothing important. Nobody should feel bad. Nobody is right or wrong.
Anybody can be over-sensitive, and anyone can put their foot in it. Talking to a brilliant latina lawyer about a bunch of drunk latino laborers, I used the phrase "the alpha" instead of "the leader" to describe a certain man who the others looked up to. She was offended that I would describe latinos as dogs. I hadn't, though. I had described men as dogs, a common metaphor that is socially acceptable in America where it is fine for women to put down men and is a common form of bonding. She was a little oversensitive. I put my foot in it, but only a little. What we performed was a social dance that revealed something about culture: most cultures include people it's okay for certain other people to diss. I'll repeat that because it's the key to my argument.
Most cultures include people it's okay for certain other people to diss.
A friend at college once said "Ever notice how "them" changes depending on who you're talking to? It's always "us" and we're always against "them," but who we're actually talking about changes so much. Are you sure you're always consistent, because I'm not."
So, sometimes, when someone is rude to you, it's because they think they're supposed to be. Maybe they made a mis-step, but it's rarely helpful to see it as more than that.
A truly underrated aspect of a well-traveled life is that it makes you aware of how many of your opinions are really unconscious insidious attempts to fit in. "You are the average of the five people you spend most of your time with" writes @cristi inOur Irrational Selves, The Priming Effect You'd think your politics wouldn't change, but it can take conscious effort to keep them from sliding around, when you start talking to a really diverse set of people and trying to listen to them and be open.
The ones people feel most adamantly right about are the social codes they believe they are subject to. The reason people feel so "right" about enforcing the social codes that create culture shock is that they have been subjected to them.
The rules of polite society vary so widely and involve so much nuance, so much history and national pride and traditional superstition as to merit examination before being acted on.
There's a hilarious book of comedy called Women Are Crazy; Men are Stupid by Howard J. Morris and Jenny Lee which I can only imagine was inspired by George Carlin's comedy on the topic. An example of women being crazy is that if asked "Do you think my sister is pretty," the right answer is to be dishonest. If the sister is ugly, you have to say you think she is pretty, but if the sister is pretty, you have to say "not as pretty as you," and hope. Sometimes cultures have similar insecurities. Sometimes cultures demand demonstrations of loyalty or rise up in defense of their right to exist or in defense of principles. I realize I am beginning to take on an scope that is beyond what I'll be able to substantiate here, but I think you'll understand the reference when I say
"we're all mad here."
Eventually it may happen that the big world will diversify enough that we all get used to seeing people of so many appearances in such a wide variety of roles that it won't be so automatic to make embarrassing assumptions that are so unintentionally rude, but I bet not. I think we're all just going to have to continue to try not to step in it too badly, to apologize well when we do, to try not to take things so personally and to vent in light, healthy ways when we do. We're all fallible humans in this together. Let's be excellent to each other.
For more in-depth look into culture shock, the full text of The Psychology of Culture Shock is highly regarded and available here. http://www.academia.edu/2662056/Psychology_of_culture_shock
For more personal accounts, a list of links to ex-pat blogs
http://www.refreshedperspectives.com/culture-shock-examples/
#tck #offended #political-correctness
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