Quote of the day

“If you steal money, you probably get arrested and convicted, because everybody says stealing is wrong. But if you do something that is very sexist or racist, because there still is a critical mass of bias in this country, it takes more cumulative instances for it to be recognized.”

–Gloria Steinem, 2017

This is Gloria Steinem speaking in an interview alongside Jane Fonda about why the allegations of sexual harassment, abuse and assault against Harvey Weinstein seem to matter to people now. As Fonda put it, “It feels like something has shifted. It’s too bad that it’s probably because so many of the women that were assaulted by Harvey Weinstein are famous and white and everybody knows them. This has been going on a long time to black women and other women of color and it doesn’t get out quite the same.”

… which in itself is a quotable quote.

But I was struck particularly by Steinem’s naming of the “critical mass of bias in this country.” She flipped the script on something I try to illuminate, when I work with groups around -isms and -phobias, and specifically around what makes them hard to address: it’s that any real -ism or -phobia is, by definition, systemic. It’s the way things work. And it’s very hard to notice the default: the ways things normally are and seem always to have been. So it’s been harder than one might rationally expect for instances of violent and repeated sexual harassment, abuse and assault to be recognized, at least in part, because as a culture we have an alarmingly high level of tolerance–and even acceptance–for misogynist and sexist attitudes and behaviors. Socially acceptable gender and sexual biases don’t just blind us to everyday, pre-assault/harassment/abuse behaviors; they inure us to the very fact of how people are degraded on the basis of their gender everyday, publicly and with our tacit consent.

What can I do? How can I help?

We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial “outside agitator” idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds.

–Martin Luther King, Jr., “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” 1963

While Martin Luther King, Jr. was writing about social injustice when he wrote those lines, they seem entirely relevant as well to the natural disasters that are befalling communities near and close to us, within and across national lines, and across vast stretches of land and water.

Wherever you are, I realize that many of us who haven’t experienced the devastation of Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, Maria and Nate or the Napa and Sonoma fires, know people who have. I hope you and your communities are safe.

And if you’re having conversations with students, colleagues, friends and family about how to help, I wanted to share some resources: I’m just learning about the concept of effective altruism, and came across this tool: the Greatest Good Calculator from the Center for International Disaster Information.

I offer these not so much as any right answers to the questions so many people are asking: “How do I help? What can I do?” but as ways to advance our discernment about how to effect our values and aspirations most impactfully.