What has happened to this blog? Well, what happened to it was that I just collapsed. I started last year intending to update it every week, but towards the end of February my mental health just dropped like a stone. I didn't feel about to write, or to function, or to do anything much except run and run. I have improved, in many ways, but in many ways I am also still very unwell. I fluctuate, but I hope to update this blog a lot more frequently this year than I did last year. The advantage I have this year is that I actually have a clear idea of where I am and what I'm planning in the future, which is an important thing.
So I've been trying to think what my first blog back should be about. I have so many things to write about that it's difficult to know where to begin, but since October I've been working as a door-to-door charity cold caller. Doing this job gave me some energy and the ability to plan for my future again, which is what I needed. It's a fun job to do, you get the knowledge that you're doing something great for charity, and you work alongside some fantastic people. I had an idea yesterday that I should write about a couple of fascinating social scenarios I've come across with some of my colleagues, because think they betray some very interesting societal attitudes that we could all do with talking about more. I shall protect the innocent as much as possible.
Casual heteronormativity
The first one involves two people who I work with very frequently, both of whom have become my good friends and who I love spending time with. They think I'm a bit odd really... (They're probably right… I do have a tendency to correct everyone's grammar and break into song at random intervals, after all…) Anyway, a few months back I ended up telling the story of how I gave up drinking alcohol after my first year at Uni. It's an embarrassing story that I won't go into detail about (I can laugh at it now!), but it did involve me making a very obvious pass at a male friend. When I told this story, my colleagues found it very funny. Colleague 1 said, 'Gay!' Colleague 2 quickly said to Colleague 1, 'You know George is gay, right?' Now, I have never given much indication as to my sexual orientation to either of these guys, or to anyone else. They were both working with the same amount of evidence, one of them assumed I was straight and the other one assumed I was gay - they can't both be right, and actually both are wrong. But the really interesting thing is that these respective assumptions led each of them to a conclusion of what it was and wasn't appropriate to say to me. Colleague 1, assuming I was straight, teased me about doing something that suggested I was gay, in a way he never would had he thought I was actually gay. Colleague 2, believing I was actually gay, gave Colleague 1 a minor rebuke to spare my feelings, in a way that would have seemed unnecessary if he'd thought I was straight. This may get slightly awkward if they read this, which they may do; I can honestly say I was not offended by either of these things, but I did find it quite a revelation to see the differences in how each of them would speak to a gay colleague as opposed to a straight one.
Casual sexism
My second anecdote is really a couple of things rolled into one. I am a feminist. When you're a male feminist working predominantly with other men, you tend to feel a bit more compelled to call out casual sexism when you see it than you would otherwise. I've heard it said that the #notallmen hashtag is counter-productive because all it is for (supposedly) is for men to tell women that they aren't what they (the women) are complaining about. I completely disagree with this, because I think it's important that men use this with each other. I'm not sure women always realise how different it is to be in an all-male group to being in a mixed group; I vastly prefer having at least one woman on my team, because on an all-male team it seems I am expected to go along with the male banter, which isn't something that normally makes me feel comfortable. For the most part I can handle it, but sometimes it's tricky. When I first joined the company, I had a colleague who, after I stepped off a door with a woman, would try to engage me in conversations that tended to go as follows:
Him: 'Was she sexy?'
Me: 'I'm not going to answer that question.'
Him: 'Honestly George, you need to lighten up!'
Me: 'Actually, no I don't, I'm completely happy as I am without objectifying people we're dealing with.'
I no longer work with that person, and thankfully now that people have got to know me they rarely try to involve me so blatantly in that sort of thing. But it does still come up, and I notice the way that on the doors men are often referred to as 'mate' and women as 'love'. The other week, there was a slight altercation where I called this out. I probably wouldn't have brought it up, but for the fact that someone was talking about how he'd started saying 'All right, love?' and then realised the person was a man. I said, quite truthfully, that if he'd been treating everyone with equal terminology this wouldn't have been an issue. His response implied that in the region of the country he comes from it's very natural, which I actually thought was pathetic; having done something in the past does not by itself make it fine to carry on doing it. The conversation didn't last that long, but on a later occasion a different colleague who had been present (a much closer friend) made a tactful suggestion that maybe calling him sexist had been going a bit far - there was an indication that theoretically, he could have been sacked as a result of me calling that out. I see that point, and I have spent hours afterwards questioning whether I was wrong, but on the whole I don't think so somehow. At what point do you decide to call someone out? Is it when someone's behaviour is actually violent, or is it before that? I think with women in particular, we tend to assume an intimacy we haven't earned; I would never consider calling someone 'love' unless I knew them well. If this isn't called out when it is witnessed, even if it isn't doing any harm by itself, that suggestion that we treat people differently depending on their gender is left to fester, and that is quite disturbing to me. It also completely alientates gender-neutral/non-binary people (I'm aware that I've used the terms 'male' and 'female' fairly loosely here, and apologies if this offends anyone - it's for want of better terms, I don't think I could tell these anecdotes without them). Moreover, if someone was sacked for saying something like that, that is the fault of the perpetrator, not the witness. If I point something out to someone, that gives them the opportunity to stop doing it; if they don't and get into trouble for it, I don't see how that is my responsibility at all. It's going down that route that leads to the turning of blind eyes to distasteful things.
Casual mental health stigma
Out of everything here, this is the only one that deeply offended me, though I did my best not to show it. During a training session, my boss became very upset with me when it came out that in a couple of my pitches I had mentioned the mental health problems I have with people on doors. He categorically told me not to do that, and I find this completely unacceptable. Mental health is something we're all becoming more aware of; it is becoming less of a taboo subject, and this is incredibly important, but there is still a stigma around it. The only way we can remove that is by feeling comfortable to talk about it, the same way we would about something like dyslexia. I'm not dyslexic, but I have a mild learning difficulty which means I get baffled about spatial things - I get my left and right confused occasionally, but the only major problem it causes in my life is that I find it inordinately difficult to tie my own shoelaces. This has come up occasionally on a door - someone will mention that my shoelaces have come untied, I'll laugh and explain. I haven't actually told my boss that I've done this, but I would be willing to place a bet on the fact that he wouldn't object at all - why would he? There isn't a stigma around that. I have the humility to see that there are exceptions to this - if I was using my struggles as a sob story to manipulate the person into signing up to charity, that would be taking it too far - but this isn't what I do. A charity pitch is not supposed to be a lecture, it's supposed to be like a passionate conversation with a friend, and if you can use a personal example whilst still maintaining your professionalism, I'd actually say no one has the right to tell you not to do that. The only criteria that need to be considered when determining if it's appropriate to talk about what you've been through is whether you would feel comfortable to do so; no one else is qualified to make that judgement.
Anyway… welcome back to my blog! I'm not sure my employer would be happy that I've written this, but needs must. I have done my best to protect my sources, but the point is that even if I had named and shamed everyone, there isn't really anything to shame them for. None of these things are particularly incriminating - they're actually things we all do, every minute of the day. That doesn't mean we shouldn't call them out.
Remember that when they come up in your own lives.
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