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Good evening. This
is Radio Free
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Beszel. I'm Alphonse.
Tonight: Pleasing.
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When I was in elementary
school and high
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school ,a couple of
things were clear.
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First, girls did better
than boys. They got the
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top grades almost always.
The other was the girls
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did what the teachers wanted
and the boys didn't.
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And that wasn't just because
boys were inherently
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uncooperative. We also
knew, or most of us
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knew, that if you were
the kind of boy who
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did what the teacher wanted
then you were kind of
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a suck. You actually weren't
a proper boy at all.
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And so I suspect a
lot of boys stayed
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silent and didn't volunteer
in class.
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Now of course the things
the teachers wanted
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weren't always academic
things. The teachers
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wanted praise, they
wanted people who'd
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feed them back whatever
they told the class
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whether what they told the
class was reasonable or
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not. Certain kinds of arguments
weren't welcome.
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So generally speaking,
the girls didn't
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make those arguments, and
generally speaking
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the boys probably didn't
either because they
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didn't say much at all
- or some of them did,
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but the boys who did - you
know those were the
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the nerds and the geeky ones.
That's the code as I
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understood it anyway, and
I'd suspect that hasn't
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changed necessarily all that
much in many places.
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But I realized something
towards the end of high school.
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Which was that although
the boys weren't doing
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as well, they weren't
getting the grades,
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and the girls were getting
all the top marks
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(and that has certainly not
changed by the way),
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but I thought in the
long run it was
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the girls who were going
to suffer more.
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Because the girls were
pleasers. They
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had been trained
from a young age
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to do what other people
wanted. Not to live
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for themselves but to
live for others. That
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they would get rewards
from teachers for
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doing what the teachers
demanded of them.
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But then I thought,
and I really did
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think in the last year
of high school,
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what happens when they leave?
What happens when
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they get out of school into
the wide world and the
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teacher isn't there to give
them a reward? What
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are they going to do? And
I felt sorry for them,
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because I thought the boys who
basically said we don't care
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would be okay. Their motivation
came from within.
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But the girls, because
they have been trained
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and had this reinforced again
and again that their
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motivation should come from
others praising them,
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would be lost without
that praise. I don't
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know for a fact that that's
what happened.
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But I have my suspicions.
I have the impression
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a lot of women do very
well in school.
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They try very hard, they
do what's asked of
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them, they do what's expected,
they work hard.
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And the boys, you know,
kind of slack
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off, don't take it
very seriously.
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And then the girls do
get out of school and
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they find that the hard
work they did in school
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doesn't necessarily have
the same effect in the
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world outside. And they
feel betrayed - as well
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they should - and they
look for something
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to blame. Now the current
thing that they
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blame is patriarchy. And
I'm not saying that
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has nothing to do with
it - perhaps it does,
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but I think part of what
happened is that they
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were told a story that wasn't
true. And it wasn't
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really in their interests
and they got hurt by
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it. And the boys got hurt
by it too because we
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know today that getting
those grades is really
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important to getting the
right education which
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is important to getting
the right credentials
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which is necessary for getting
the right jobs.
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So what we're ending up
with is a lot of boys
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who might be capable,
who had the potential
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and didn't have it realized,
because they didn't
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do the things, didn't jump
through the hoops that
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they were supposed to jump
through - and girls
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who did jump through the
hoops and were very
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successful and showed how
hard they could work and
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how smart they were, but now
discover that they're
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not getting the rewards
that they thought they
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were promised. It's a sad
situation all around.
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And it's not just that
those girls are
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also taught to be pleasers.
In general,
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and it's not just in school,
girls are brought
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up to do things for other
people - to put other
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people first. And so, you
know, we know that they
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they don't ask for raises
as much in the job.
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They probably are
self-sacrificing. I'm
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talking generalities
here, of course
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this is all averages
there are
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plenty of exceptions.
But anyway,
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they're more likely to be
self-sacrificing with
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their partners for example,
and they'll get taken
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advantage of. And they
see it as sexism and
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in a way it is because
that's how girls are
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brought up. But in a way
it's also because of
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this dynamic. And I just
think it's really sad.
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But look what we're trying
to do to fix it. It
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seems the solution seems
to be to make more and
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more of life like high school.
To make life beyond
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school as if it's still
assessed by these same
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kinds of criteria. I mean
the irony is is that
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school itself structurally
is patriarchal - in
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other words, you can take
the men out of it, it
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doesn't matter, but it has
had that same hierarchy
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where you're working for
someone who's up on top
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and that person approves
of you and that person
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gives you your self-worth
by saying you're
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worth this, you know you
got these grades.
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And we're doing that
more and more in the
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outside world. And I think
that's a mistake.
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It's reinforcing again
the same dynamic that
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has made girls and boys men
and women miserable.
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But that's the romantic
thing maybe. I sort
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of wonder if that's part
of the reason that
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that Hogwarts and HarryPpotter
are so popular:
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because they they recall
that dynamic, that place
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where people have been
so successful by
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following the rules and maybe
bending them a bit.
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So what are we doing about
this. We're making the
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rest of the world more like
school. We're making
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it so that in more and more
areas of life we're
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working inside hierarchies,
inside systems. We're
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striving to please somebody,
striving to please
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everybody in fact - not
just the people in our
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organization but the people
for whom we have to
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perform in our personas
that we wear online and
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on social media and all
of this stuff. And it's
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a constant question of, Are
they approving of me?
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Are they affirming me? Or
are they not? and that
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affirmation is fundamentally,
I believe, damaging.
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You know this is, I think,
one of the really
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dangerous things about identity
politics. In fact
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I object to the concept
of ascribed identity.
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In other words, somebody
who really has a secure
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identity, who really
knows who they are,
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doesn't need a box or
a label to put on it.
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They're just themselves.
My identity is
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me. That's what i want
it to be anyway,
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but if I depend on other
people recognizing
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me as an X, whatever
X might be,
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affirming me as an X, then
I have taken power
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away from myself and I've
given it to them.
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Now I am dependent on
what other people
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think of me and I'm
not independent,
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I can't decide who I
want to be anymore.
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And if those people
decide to judge me
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differently then I've
got a real problem,
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because then my identity
is under threat.
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So to stop that from happening,
I need to please
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them. I need to play up
to whatever identity it
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is that I'm supposed to
have. And in the end
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the result is that I'm
weak. I lose myself. I
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think identity is one of
those things - many of
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the most important things
in life are like this,
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things like love, things
like wisdom, things
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that you can't actually chase
them and catch them
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the harder you try to grab
them the harder you
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hold on to them the more
elusive they become,
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the things that that come
while you're doing
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other things, while you're
working with the flow
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of life and the flow of
the world, but if you
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fight too hard for them,
they will elude you.
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I think identity is like that,
but i think our structures
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from our schools that teach
us to please, from
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how we teach our girls to
please, to be pleasers,
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and from the whole political
social thing
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around identity is all
going down this path
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that I think is really damaging
and dangerous,
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and leaving people not knowing
who they are. And
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even if they think they
know who they are, it's
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a fragile place to be because
it could be hurt
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by anybody else who doesn't
see it the way they
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need it to be seen. If we
really want to be free
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we need to start peeling
away some of
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the layers, some of
the affirmations,
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some of the praise
that we give to
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people, and let them
just be themselves.
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This is Alphonse for Radio
Free Beszel. www.beszel.ca.
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Good night.
