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Unnecessary Assumptions
What society tells us about who we're supposed to be.
Posted March 16, 2009
The subtle nature of bias in modern society is a topic I've touched on previously in this blog. And the above post this week from one of my fellow PT bloggers makes a compelling case for how said phenomenon can occur even when people have only the very best and friendliest of intentions.
As a case in point, we recently invited to my campus a developmental psychologist from the University of Texas named Rebecca Bigler. Dr. Bigler gave a fascinating talk in which she outlined some of the precursors that lead to the development of stereotyping in children. One of these factors is unnecessary labeling: when people in a child's environment repeatedly use group-based labels in situations that don't require them, stereotype development is facilitated.
She gave as her primary example a continuing debate she has had with some of her own daughter's teachers, namely the well-known tendency in schools to talk in terms of "boys and girls." There's the seemingly innocuous "good morning, boys and girls." And "boys and girls, please quiet down." Also, "how about the boys take care of cleaning out the brushes and the girls are in charge of putting the paints away?" And so on.
A ubiquitous and seemingly harmless phenomenon, right? I can still hear in my head the voices of many of my elementary school teachers using the "boys and girls" phrase. But, as Dr. Bigler suggested in her talk, what does this language really accomplish?
It certainly draws attention to the distinction between boys and girls. And far be it from me to argue that such a distinction is imaginary. Hey, I took AP Biology back in the day. And as the father of two girls, I recognize that my current facility with naming the Disney princesses or differentiating plié from passé would not be nearly as refined had the roll of the chromosomal dice come out differently in my household.
But what does it buy the teacher to speak in terms of "boys and girls"? What's wrong with "good morning, children"? Why go out of the way to emphasize this difference in domains when it just doesn't matter (and isn't serving a particular purpose)? If boys and girls get different jobs after painting is over, you can see how the skids might be greased for children to buy in even more quickly to gender differences when it comes to math problems or leadership abilities, no? I understand the separate bathrooms, but why should the girls line up on one wall for recess and the boys on the other?
If you think this is making a mountain out of a molehill, ask yourself the question Dr. Bigler posed to her daughter's teacher: Would it be OK for the teacher to say, "good morning, White kids, Black kids, Latino kids, and Asian kids"? Or to assign the white children one clean-up task and the brown children another? Of course not.
Well, you might say, race is a socially constructed category with little genetic basis. OK, but it, like gender, is a protected group in the eyes of the law. But, fine, forget about race for a second... would it be OK for the teacher to ask all the kids with 2 parents at home to line up on the left and the other kids to go to the right?
The difference is that we're used to the idea of "good morning, boys and girls." It's offered with a friendly motivation. It's nothing if not inclusive. But what purpose does it really serve, other than to reinforce the importance of a difference in domains where that difference isn't really important?
Which leads me back to the post that inspired this entry in the first place. In it, Dr. Mustanski gives examples of the ways in which comments or actions which to many might seem to be innocuous and offered out of genuinely pro-social motivations can have deleterious effects in the expectations and assumptions they convey. Heterosexism, like other forms of bias, is not limited to explicit group-based animus or even discomfort with members of another social category.
No, just think of the lifetime's worth of societal expectations conveyed by seemingly innocuous questions like, "Oh, you're a princess for Halloween–who's your Prince Charming?" Or "Well, when you grow up and become a woman then you can find your own Daddy to marry." These are statements offered harmlessly–in fact, I'm sure I myself have uttered them. But imagine the weight to which they accumulate for the individuals who grow up to realize this isn't what the happy ending to their story looks like.
The concept of group-based microaggressions is very real. And it doesn't take hate or even mild discomfort to bring them about in daily life.
