Bad conduct
Apr. 18th, 2011 10:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dreamer_easyHmm. I was wondering if it was too much to call female-on-female social aggression - aka bullying - "a profoundly anti-woman, anti-feminist act." I was thinking of the paradox of trashing, in which feminists bully feminists; and also of the way girls and women are taught to choke down their anger, meaning it spurts out as passive aggression. Still, it's a pretty stiff statement. Is it fair to blame girls and women for how patriarchy expects us to behave? Was I overstating things?
Then, yesterday, I stumbled across an analysis of the discipline imposed by the teachers in a 1950s British girls' boarding school, written by feminist and anthropologist Judith Okely. Obviously, there are major differences between LiveJournal etc and an institution essentially run like a prison. What struck me was the similarities between how the girls were punished - "public exposure", "individual visibility", "to be picked out and stared at" - and the pillorying of bullying targets online. One's quiet and one's noisy, but they both rely on public humiliation - and they both depend on meticulous record-keeping.
At Okely's school, girls were given bad conduct marks for running, talking, losing things, and "for offences so trivial I cannot remember". She describes the "daily 'roll-call' where, in the presence of the entire school and staff, a girl with a [conduct mark] had to announce the mark instead of saying 'present'. Hearts thumped as names came nearer. After a disobedience the headmistress would always ask, 'What's that for?'... While the rest of the school was sitting cross-legged on the floor, she might be asked to stand up and repeat her crime loud and clear. This public confession was a symbolic variant of the public execution, with its necessary witnesses among whom fear of a similar fate would be generated." The headmistress would read out conduct reports to the whole school in a further ritual of humiliation. (Girls would also be put on display, backs turned but "conspicuous to all", in the hallway, at the dinner table, or on the high table on its raised dais at the front of the dining room. Compare this with the uncontrollable exposure possible on the Internet.)
Conduct marks weren't just spoken aloud. They were "given textual form, emblazoned in a public record of crime or obedience. In the main passage at the chapel entrance, for all to see" were lists of the pupils' names. Conduct marks were indicated by an elaborate system of daily and weekly symbols. "Thus the performance of each girl for each week of the term was mapped and open to scrutiny by everyone." A girl whose record was marked "disgrace" could cost her house the good behaviour award. There is an obvious and painful parallel between this form of social control, in which every error and crime is painstakingly publicly recorded, and those fora dedicated to gleefully keeping a record of every tiff, squabble, and blunder in fandom - although this record lasts a lot longer than a single school term.
OK, but why "anti-woman", "anti-feminist"? Partly because it's female vs female*, but that's not all. As Okely notes, "The system of punishment plays on the behaviour expected of girls... From infancy they are made modest, passive and withdrawn compared to boys." The more a girl had "internalised modesty, humility, and the invisibility of the self", the more terrifying this public exposure and shame was for her. Nor could she defend herself: "Humility, an apologetic stance, downcast eyes - possibly tears of defeat - were the correct forms. Any appearance of dignity or pride provoked further rebukes." This is more than just keeping the girls orderly and subdued; it's gender policing. As Okely points out, it both takes advantage of girl's socialisation, and it reinforces that socialisation.
Worst of all, to the school, this conformity was more important than learning or intelligence. There's a comparison to be drawn here with the energy spent undermining and humiliating fellow progressives, energy which might have been spent on fighting bigotry. In the case of fandom, bullying damages individuals, but it also damages a community that, at its best, is a model of shared enjoyment, acceptance, and female solidarity. The policing of anger is gender policing. It's not proper for ladies to fight in public. Why else do fangirls call it "wanking"**?
__
Okely, Judith. "Privileged Schooled and Finished: Boarding Education for Girls". in Ardener, Shirley (ed). Defining Females: the Nature of Women in Society. Berg, Providence RI and Oxford, 1993.
* Obviously, boys can be perpetrators and targets for this sort of bullying too. Here I'm comparing Okely's girl's school with what I've observed in majority-female online media fandom. YMMV.
** In majority-male UK Doctor Who fandom, "fanwank" is excessive use of continuity, not interpersonal conflict.
Then, yesterday, I stumbled across an analysis of the discipline imposed by the teachers in a 1950s British girls' boarding school, written by feminist and anthropologist Judith Okely. Obviously, there are major differences between LiveJournal etc and an institution essentially run like a prison. What struck me was the similarities between how the girls were punished - "public exposure", "individual visibility", "to be picked out and stared at" - and the pillorying of bullying targets online. One's quiet and one's noisy, but they both rely on public humiliation - and they both depend on meticulous record-keeping.
At Okely's school, girls were given bad conduct marks for running, talking, losing things, and "for offences so trivial I cannot remember". She describes the "daily 'roll-call' where, in the presence of the entire school and staff, a girl with a [conduct mark] had to announce the mark instead of saying 'present'. Hearts thumped as names came nearer. After a disobedience the headmistress would always ask, 'What's that for?'... While the rest of the school was sitting cross-legged on the floor, she might be asked to stand up and repeat her crime loud and clear. This public confession was a symbolic variant of the public execution, with its necessary witnesses among whom fear of a similar fate would be generated." The headmistress would read out conduct reports to the whole school in a further ritual of humiliation. (Girls would also be put on display, backs turned but "conspicuous to all", in the hallway, at the dinner table, or on the high table on its raised dais at the front of the dining room. Compare this with the uncontrollable exposure possible on the Internet.)
Conduct marks weren't just spoken aloud. They were "given textual form, emblazoned in a public record of crime or obedience. In the main passage at the chapel entrance, for all to see" were lists of the pupils' names. Conduct marks were indicated by an elaborate system of daily and weekly symbols. "Thus the performance of each girl for each week of the term was mapped and open to scrutiny by everyone." A girl whose record was marked "disgrace" could cost her house the good behaviour award. There is an obvious and painful parallel between this form of social control, in which every error and crime is painstakingly publicly recorded, and those fora dedicated to gleefully keeping a record of every tiff, squabble, and blunder in fandom - although this record lasts a lot longer than a single school term.
OK, but why "anti-woman", "anti-feminist"? Partly because it's female vs female*, but that's not all. As Okely notes, "The system of punishment plays on the behaviour expected of girls... From infancy they are made modest, passive and withdrawn compared to boys." The more a girl had "internalised modesty, humility, and the invisibility of the self", the more terrifying this public exposure and shame was for her. Nor could she defend herself: "Humility, an apologetic stance, downcast eyes - possibly tears of defeat - were the correct forms. Any appearance of dignity or pride provoked further rebukes." This is more than just keeping the girls orderly and subdued; it's gender policing. As Okely points out, it both takes advantage of girl's socialisation, and it reinforces that socialisation.
Worst of all, to the school, this conformity was more important than learning or intelligence. There's a comparison to be drawn here with the energy spent undermining and humiliating fellow progressives, energy which might have been spent on fighting bigotry. In the case of fandom, bullying damages individuals, but it also damages a community that, at its best, is a model of shared enjoyment, acceptance, and female solidarity. The policing of anger is gender policing. It's not proper for ladies to fight in public. Why else do fangirls call it "wanking"**?
__
Okely, Judith. "Privileged Schooled and Finished: Boarding Education for Girls". in Ardener, Shirley (ed). Defining Females: the Nature of Women in Society. Berg, Providence RI and Oxford, 1993.
* Obviously, boys can be perpetrators and targets for this sort of bullying too. Here I'm comparing Okely's girl's school with what I've observed in majority-female online media fandom. YMMV.
** In majority-male UK Doctor Who fandom, "fanwank" is excessive use of continuity, not interpersonal conflict.
