Live Not for Others

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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.