#IBMCSC CSCUSA2

[cinhanez]

on how Y can help X ...

Why a space to reflect on how men participate, contribute, and fight for women's rights?

Two recent events made me start this blog. First, a recent conversation in my personal account in Facebook (I'll talk about this in another post). Second, I will be working with a women's rights organization full-time during the whole month of September, 2018. 

I am participating in the Corporate Service Corps of IBM this year, a program where IBM employees like me work for NGOs as consultants, as part of an international team. Last week I learned that my group was assigned to support a San Francisco-based organization which empower women all around the globe to fight for their rights and for a more just and equal life (more details in a future post).

I have been supportive of women's rights my whole life, but this is the first time I will be actively working with it. Besides, I will be the only man working in this project, what prompt me to reflect on how I should behave and how I am going to be seen. So I want to use this blog to share my experience and thoughts on how men can effectively support women's rights organizations, discussing issues such as empathy, power, guilty, masochism vs. manhood, and other stuff which will appear along the way.

This is not a forum to argue for or against specific women's rights. I want it to be a conversation about how people with Y chromosomes can help people with only X chromosomes to have an equal life.

[cinhanez]

Are Ys always enemies of Xs ?

Recently I had an interesting interchange in Facebook. A friend of mine posted a text by a journalist describing an infamous case in Brazil where a man killed his ex-partner. In the text the author described typical scenarios of intimidation and violence of women, and concluded each paragraph with a sentence "justifying" the wrongdoing with an expression like "He is simply a man."

The reading of the text disturbed me, because I felt that because I am a man, it would imply that I was able to commit the same kind of acts, or condone them. I commented the post that I felt offended of being included in the category of men who hit, stalk, and kill women. I do not see "machismo" as a natural consequence of the Y chromosome. Then a friend of the my friend replied somewhat in the lines of I would never be able to understand the feeling of being threatened by men in the street or other spaces, so I had no reason to be offended. That she wouldn't care that I was offended because I was a man.

Revisiting this exchange in this post, somehow it feels like a typical "absurd" dialogue from an Ionesco play, as often conversations in social media are. But when my volunteer team of the IBM corporate citizenship program was assigned to work with women's rights organisation in San Francisco (as described in the previous post), all come back to my mind.

Why do some women see all men as their natural enemies? What if machism is inherent to manhood? Can men actually take the cause of women's rights and being effective in supporting it without being able to understand what they go through? Those are some of my thoughts as I move very close to start working, hands on, on advising this organisation which teaches female leaders technology to empower them. All I know I have much to learn about women's rights, about men supporting them, and about how I can do it effectively, or ineffectively.

[cinhanez]

When Xs and Ys work together for women’s rights

After an intense month working with WAKE to create a growth plan for them (as part of the IBM Corporate Service Corps), I depart back to Brazil feeling changed, and determined. I arrived a supporter and leave believing that equality and women's rights is the key struggle for human rights for this and the next decade. The current political happenings in US and Brazil, where gender issues have surfaced to the mainstream of the political discourse, show that we are a key turning point.

I also leave with the certainty that it is essential to include Ys in the fight for women’s rights. And most importantly, it is time to work with this generation of boys and young men so the idea of gender inequality is for them as repugnant as the concept of slavery is today for our society. Feminism have advanced in large steps among Xs, but I do not see it happening  at the same pace with Ys. The message of equality has to be worked since the infancy of boys and girls, in the media, in the language, and in the behaviours. 

There is a lot to be worked out on how to do this, and we should not underestimate the strong forces against such a change. But that is why Xs and Ys should work together to promote gender equality.

[cinhanez]

When Xs include Ys

How Ys would feel if suddenly they would be the object of inclusion and of active action for their rights, the inverse of what happens today in most situations? Working the last 3 weeks very close to the founders and staff of WAKE, a social organization focused on empowering women’s rights activists with technology, has taught me one thing or two about that.

It is refreshing, and at the same time provocative, to be in situations where someone says “we should also include men”, or remind that in an event “some of the participants were men”. Ys are not used to be in contexts where they feel they should be included but they are not present in majority. Except for situations socially constructed as “feminine”,  the notion that Ys should be included by Xs is often seen as bizarre. That is the unfortunate state we are in.

Of course, the only thing bizarre here is the presumption, or self-entitlement, of Ys that they are the ones should be in control, and therefore the ones who should be doing, if they want, the inclusion. But it is one thing to talk and digress about the idea, and another, much more interesting, to actually experience it like it has happened to me in a couple of occasions in the last weeks.

I have experienced discrimination before in my life, as a foreigner in Japan and USA, and that is a very unpleasant experience. What has happened in the last weeks is quite different, because I am in an environment where people actually care about inclusion, but have to remind themselves constantly to act in that way also for Ys. More than that, I am used to be in situations where I am actively pursuing inclusion of Xs and minorities, where I have to patrol my own language for inclusion. But rarely I am in a context where my gender is the one which people around me want to make sure that feels included. It is good to feel welcomed (as a member of a group), but it is not good to perceive that being part of the group is not a natural thing.

I do not pretend that I can feel or understand the complexity of Xs dealing with such situations, often since they are very young. But it has been a wake-up call for me to see that even when people around you try very hard to be inclusive in their language and their acts, that very behaviour also works as a remind of the need of inclusion and, of course, of the reality of exclusion.

As if inclusion was not natural, as it should be. Simple. Thanks to the Xs in this IBM CSC project to help me understand it.