Growing up in a Jewish household has been one of the defining aspects of my identity. This is not a religious statement, rather it is a cultural and familial one. While Judaism is a strong, ancient religion genetically and ethnically tying together a group of people across disparate parts of the world through a well established belief system, this is not the aspect of my identity I am focusing on with regard to Judaism. Dorothy Smith talks of everyday world experiences, such as walking your dog and avoiding walking on manicured property areas, as defining how people co-ordinate their world and make sense of it through the constraints of institutions. Taking this a step further, if institutions are understood as the rules by which people live in society, than religions can be understood as the different sets of culturally specific rules through which families come together in identity construction- that is- during times of transition requiring a common set of social definitions of what it means to be family.

To demonstrate this from my own childhood with an example, every Saturday (or Sabbath, known as the holy day of rest according to Jewish tradition) my family would walk together to the Synagogue for spiritual services (or Shul as it is often referred to). Time at Shul is probably not all that different from what you’d experience at a Church on a Sunday. It is generally a source of community-building, but on top of that, reflection on the past week through scripture, a reminder of the religious hierarchy that must prevail in the institutions, as well as the commonly permissive ways we celebrate all events within a community throughout the life course, such as births, deaths, coming of age events, and the like. I attribute my dual identity in a similar vein as DuBois’ concept of double consciousness to my personal atheistic beliefs in combination with my strong ties to my family as well as my Jewish cultural identity. Further adding to this sense of double consciousness are strong historical and cultural memories that tie my Jewish “blood” to my identity, most notably the Holocaust and the ways in which Jews have for many centuries stood up to varying forms and degrees of antisemitism and persecution.

DuBois defines Double Consciousness through a different identity lenses. For him, it is through problematizing of his African-American identity that he arrives at the concept. This is because during the time that he was writing, still under the oppression of Jim Crowe laws in the United States and having a mixed black and white background, he felt he could “pass” for either identity in many contexts, but it was difficult for him to achieve comfort in his own way because he always felt one “half” of himself in flux in many situations. DuBois was one of the very first non white people to pass through the education system in the United States at the time, and it is no wonder he felt a strong sense of internal strife during this period of change in the American conception of race and oppression at this period.

Relating this back to my own experience as a Jewish student at UBC, I attended an event at the Hillel House several weeks ago. Hillel is a centre for Jewish life on campus. I have been to some of their events before, especially in my first and second years of schooling at UBC because it was one of the first areas of campus I decided to look into because of my identity. The first few years of my time at UBC were a marked period of transition for me, however, as I was in the midst of forming strong opinions about my identity, such as my atheist views, feminist identification, coming out as gay to my family and friends, and more politically leftist leaning lenses of the world after being exposed to more of the world than I had ever been before. These changes, or developments in my identity for that matter have had a profoundly conflicting and tension-inducing effect on my relations with my Jewish “half”. I hadn’t been back to Hillel House for probably 2 to 3 years when I decided to attend this event several weeks ago because I needed the space, time, and energy to reflect on my relationship with my Jewish identity.

I haven’t solved these tensions by any stretch, however I have been able to gain some perspective. One such insight, for example, is that somehow in political and academic attitudes and discussions about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is that it is somehow the case that if you support one side (Israel) you must necessarily be a politically right-leaning oriented individual, and on the other hand if you support the other side (Palestine), you must necessarily be a politically left-leaning oriented individual. There is very little space to exist on the political and cultural spectrum outside of this binary. This is exemplified by a relatively recent, sad moment in Canadian political history when the then-president of the Green Party of Canada was essentially forced to resign over a letter he wrote in support of a nuanced view toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict this summer, amid continued warfare between the two sides. This demonstrated a refusal on the part of the party to consider allowing the party position to not take a specific position on the issue in support of one side or the other. This was a heavy moment for me, as a generally progressive politically inclined individual, believing that the Green Party is rightly making strides in the right direction toward environmental sustainability and responsibility in Canada. It meant that politically, if you are progressive (or left-oriented) and are not against supporting Israel, there’s no representation for you in Canada, and in most other democracies in the world for that matter.

This article is not about Israel, because my views on Israel are extremely complex and personal for that matter. However, in relation to identity construction, I am attempting to draw a parallel between my dual identity as a Jewish student at UBC in the 2010s and Du Bois’ concept of double consciousness. This is a product of attending many events, such as the one at Hillel I attended a few weeks ago, where my relative support for Israel (not Israel’s policies) has been perceived as support for exclusionary-based, ideologically right-wing or Islamophobic attitudes. In the opposite direction, my feminist and anti-oppressive attitudes have also been perceived as those that are necessary for a view toward Israel that is nothing less than a branding of the Jewish state as a menace, a demonic, colonizing, patriarchal force that must be boycotted, removed, and sanctioned in the international community.

Sadly, such attitudes on both sides of the situation seem to be polarizing, especially when facing the strong, anonymously protected opinions of the citizens of the internet. Not only are those attitudes riddled with hate speech at times toward the side they are “against”, they also overwhelmingly show misunderstanding toward a host of other cultures, ideological political attitudes (such as feminism, Islam, and Judaism for examples), and people. Never has a time been so appropriate from my perspectives to take Dorothy Smith’s words to heart, that the everyday must be where we start, based on what we see on the ground. So much has been distorted by the media and  by culturally hegemonic scripts. Safe spaces for people of varying perspectives (but which in reality, most of the time, are much closer in ideological space than apart) to discuss their dual identities, as is so much more common now than in the past, are a necessity for achieving tomorrow’s peace and unifying our deepest internal tensions and identities.

*Citations: W.E.B. Du Bois (1903/2012) From “The Souls of Black Folk.” In Scott Appelrouth and Laura Desfor Edles. Classical and Contemporary Sociological Theory (2^nd edition). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Pine Forge Press. Pp. 271-283.

Smith, Dorothy (1987/2012). From “The Everyday World As Problematic.” In Scott Appelrouth and Laura Desfor Edles. Classical and Contemporary Sociological Theory (2nd Edition). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Pine Forge Press Pp. 570-3.

In the course of my volunteering with Downtown Eastside-based social justice advocacy organization Pivot Legal, I encountered and interacted with many different facets of this vibrant neighbourhood that I never knew existed before. Through my time interacting with residents, distributing streetpapers, organizing contests, and attending local events, the one thing that struck me the most was the unifying sense of community which permeated this area. Everywhere I looked, locals were taking pride in and rallying around the everyday achievements of those who lived in this impoverished neighbourhood. In this blogpost, I would like to use the Carnegie Community Centre’s biweekly newsletter as an example to discuss this sense of communal identity in the context of the DTES’s social and political positioning in relation to society at large.

As I wrote in an earlier post (which you can find here), community newsletters can be a very effective instrument for the creation, maintenance, and transmission of communal identities. Indeed, the Megaphone streetpaper is a fantastic example of how DTES residents can fashion a positive and constructive self-identity. The articles, editorials, and photographs found in Megaphone “cultivate and propagate a narrative that valorized the day-to-day efforts of the DTES community to survive and to fight for its own rights in wider society”. The same can be said for the content of the Carnegie Community Centre’s newsletter, which publishes cultural programs, local workshops, editorials, and creative writing by residents. One can easily see from the language being used (“making our community led festival such a success”, “talented people… in the downtown eastside”, “our beloved community”) (Carnegie Newsletter) that building an affirmative self-identity is a central theme of this newsletter. Incidentally, the Centre’s “Monthly Speaker Series” for November features none other than Dr. Tom Kemple, the UBC faculty sponsor for the student-directed seminar that is conducting this blog. Suffice to say, this newsletter is a platform for promoting activities designed to enrich the cultural and recreational experiences of people living in the DTES.

However, this is not the only way in which the Carnegie Newsletter engages in community-building. As can be seen in many of the editorials and creative writing pieces, the newsletter is also engaged in discussing the problems faced by the DTES. However, it does so in a way that is completely different from the journalism found in mainstream media, which tends to utilize an almost uniformly negative “rhetoric of ‘skid row’” to position the DTES as dangerous, diseased, and destitute (Ley & Dobson 14). Most of all, the media has an overwhelming tendency to blame the residents of the DTES as responsible for these conditions (Liu & Blomley 130). Even a cursory reading of the latest issue of the Newsletter will reveal that that is not how the locals see themselves.

In fact, instead of accepting this externally-imposed burden of responsibility for their misfortunes, the Newsletter allows DTES locals to make and disseminate claims that are in alignment with what the sociologist C. Wright Mills calls the “sociological imagination” (4). This perspective allows people to see their “personal troubles” in the context of “the public issues of social structure”, which constrains the opportunities available to individuals and defines the choices that they are able to make (4). In essence, the sociological imagination allows people to see beyond the limit of their individual circumstances and realize that certain problems are “incapable of personal solution” and thus beyond the reductive notion of individualized blame circulated by mainstream journalism (6). This line of thinking can be seen in editorial after editorial identifying “big money”, “the malicious media”, “greedy developers”, “measly welfare cheques”, “collapsing SROs” (single room occupancy), etc. (Carnegie Newsletter) as the true causes of the denigrated living conditions of the DTES. In this way, the Newsletter also becomes a vehicle through which residents can make counter-claims that politicize the issues of the DTES and resist mainstream typifications.

By situating the roots of the “personal troubles” faced by those living in this neighbourhood in wider social structures such as welfare policy, free-market capitalism, and social housing, these editorials shine a more positive light on their communal identity while making the problems that they face rallying points around which locals can organize to make demands for change. In fact, this phenomenon is one that has been conceptualized by Ley and Dobson in their study on gentrification in Vancouver as a “distinctive local moral culture that accepts the right to the city for poor people” that is the product of “sustained political mobilisation” (2494). Clearly, the Carnegie Newsletter acts as a vibrant, grassroots-oriented platform for this mobilisation. It is an excellent example of one way through which a stigmatized group can create a constructive communal identity around which they can organize to make political claims for social justice.

“Carnegie Newsletter.” Carnegie Community Centre. N.p., 15 Nov. 2014. Web. 23 Nov. 2014.

Ley, David, and Cory Dobson. “Are there limits to gentrification? The contexts of impeded gentrification in Vancouver.” Urban Studies 45.12 (2008): 2471-2498.

Liu, Sikee, and Nicholas Blomley. “Making news and making space: Framing Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.” The Canadian Geographer/Le Géographe canadien 57.2 (2013): 119-132.

Mills, C. Wright. “The promise of sociology.” Seeing ourselves (1959): 1-6.

For this weeks reading by Eric Fong and Elic Chan, I felt that I took more into my own considerations and learned the important factors about preference, language, central aspects of residences and demography. Before moving on, Id like to say that Lisa Lee did a fantastic and easy to follow job on her presentation on co-ethnic residency/preference. I learned from her presentation that, it was mainly focused on Indian and Chinese focusing on that they are seen as the largest visible minority/ immigrant groups in Canada, mainly through the bigger cities Toronto and our home, Vancouver. I was shocked to experience that there are co-ethnic preferences within moving preference into a neighbourhood where it is highly populated by one race or another. Thus this incudes, friends, family members, shops/mall, religion and lower funds of income. In a way it is disappointing to see that people coming into Canada from other countries, want to be or feel closer to home once they arrive to Canada making places now highly segregated with ethnicity issues and leaving out others. An example can be of Surrey where it is a highly populated area of East Indians in Newton, and many Canadians or other ethnicities do not want to move there thinking or feeling that they are not wanted or because of how it is already situated and how there is a strong sense of culture and language already embedded in that area. So, because of this, there needs to be a better solution and plan in that one does not feel left out and or thinking that one is not wanted in a certain area or place. So in that being said, language has barriers and should have an central aspect of where everyone has a sense of belonging. Perhaps helpful situations or ideas can be of the young generations translating or volunteering something that can bring society together by being more multicultural and embracing other races and different cultures to unify as Canada, and not little India, little Italy, China town, etc. People that do come here obviously come for positive reasons and want to learn English because it is an essential language that is now needed throughout the world to work and to excel in ones education. In class, Justin mentioned this and I agree and think that people should learn English so that there won’t be such a preference for co-ethnic residency. There should be some differences (race) in one’s neighbourhood, a unique and exotic taste of different cultures and foods, to be humble, friendly and accepting of change, of people and of race, because we are all in end, just people like you and me.

When I went to the Halloween club crawl event, I felt that it was very open, loud exciting music and super cool costumes worn by students. I loved how everyone was mingling and a lot of students like myself went alone and just joined in conversations with other peeps, wanting a good time and dancing to funky songs. As a sociologist major, I of course observed the place, the people, the costumes and the food and started talking to new people within minutes. It reminds me of Lisa’s presentation co-ethnic residence because in some ways it relates to this event that was super fun. If one did not want to join a group, or if one did not want someone to join that group at the Halloween event, then there are problems were that individual may feel less welcomed or intimated by numerous reasons that we should all understand and work with, but thankfully this event was open to everyone that there needed not any kinds of so called “groups” but more of an welcome to show support to our school events at UBC. On the contrary, I do see on campus that there are co-ethnic preferences that play important factors in being in a group or club, example: one needs to meet the criteria to join a club or one needs to be of a certain ethnicity to join. I believe that because of our norms and values groups are just naturally configured like this, but it is wrong and soon enough they won’t be existing anymore due to people getting angry and frustrated by their nonsense. All in all, the Halloween night was an eventful one with lots of dancing, drinking, and most importantly, mingling with new students from all over the world!

On October 18th, I gave a presentation on the International Service Learning experience I had during the summer. From May to August, I, with a team of two other students from UBC, stayed at a rural village in Uganda with the goal of promoting literacy and reading culture at a local community library. Now that we had come back, we had to present our work and reflections to the general public. The event was a “symposium” with speakers, workshops, and presentations scheduled throughout the day, and we were encouraged to invite our family and friends so that they could see the fruit of our three months of volunteering abroad. Once the day came, it became obvious that many friends and family of the presenters had indeed come to see our presentations, including those of my team members. This shocked me a little, because I did not consider for a moment inviting my family and friends. I was driven to think about why this was so, and after a short reflection, I came to the conclusion that I was ashamed. I was ashamed because I felt that what we did was a trifle, a colonialist summer jaunt — the very thing we set out to repute.

I am not being entirely fair; I do think that we did some good on our placement. However, first subconsciously then consciously, I realized that I had failed in achieving a personal goal of mine: to be more useful than the cost of my trip. In other words, had I simply sent the money I used to fund the trip to the people I “helped”, would it have been more useful than my actual trip? Although this is a very ambiguous standard of measure, I wanted to be able to answer an unambiguous “yes” by the end of the placement. However, I could not. I could say with certainty that it was a great experience for me; I learned a lot about myself and the world, made great memories, and developed a few useful skills. But I could not say with confidence that I had prevailed over the colonial relations of power, or that I had helped the people that needed it most, or that many people’s lives were improved for my spending three months there. Rather, it seemed to me that simply being there as a privileged, educated, middle-class, white(ish) body perpetuated the colonial trope of the white man’s burden.

I had thought that once people came to know me as a person, my “real identity” would become the primary characteristic over my “western stereotype”. Although I still believe this is possible, I think the short duration of our placement and the lack of “localization” training greatly hindered the process. In retrospect, the fact that we did not know even the basics of Luganda (the lingua franca of Uganda) upon arrival belies our arrogance and naivete. We wanted to decolonize our relationships, yet all we could speak was the tongue of the colonizer. Despite the language barrier, we ended up becoming good friends with a few Ugandans by the end of the placement, in no small part due to our efforts at learning Ugandan Sign Language. However, for the vast majority of people we worked with, we were still rich white western kids. True participatory development cannot take place in such an unequal relationship. I think, cautiously, that we could have diminished the gap significantly if we stayed for a longer period of time such as one year or more. However, in the span of three months, we flew in and flew out — not only much too short of a time to truly get to know people of the community but also a stark reminder to them that we had the freedom and money to zoom around the world, that their lives were something we could dip our feet into and then withdraw at our leisure.

This may sound like so much apologia — doubly so, for my failure to do true participatory development, and for thinking that I could easily divorce myself from embodied colonial histories. Although I’m no white person, I come from an institution and background that is steeped in colonialism. Then let it be an apologia, at least until I come to terms with the uneasiness that has been given a name: the white man’s shame.

During the 1960s North American society was entering a sexual, medical, and cultural renaissance that came to be defined in later periods as “the swinging sixties” or simply “the sixties”. This is because of a major collapse of social mores (more, pronounced MOOR-AY, is a sociological term meaning strict rule, such as a traffic light that is red. If you’re driving your car and don’t stop, you could face serious sanctioning, such as a traffic ticket).

Such social mores in North America I am referring to include the regulation of women’s (and men’s for that matter) sexual lives, identities, and the socially acceptable ways they were able to express themselves. This was the era of the birth of music festivals, marijuana smoking, LSD, and a growing ideological intergenerational gap characterized by varying conceptions of what words like “freedom” and “free time” and “future” meant. Eventually, during the later years of the decade, even the most radical themes of this cultural shift persisted in every corner of American society in some form, whether it be design and colour palettes for houses and room decor, popular television and media, or music itself. Take a look at this Youtube clip from the show Mad Men, where Don’s new wife sings him a song at a party to get a better understanding of what I mean.

How did you feel watching this clip? How can we understand expression of this kind from an identity construction framework?

Recently, I attended a Chinese Varsity Club event. It was one of their recruiting events, involving a lot of games and competitions and stuff of that sort. It took me back to the days of summer camp sometimes, because it felt like there were lots of friendly, outgoing people in leadership roles with high energy, wanting to make everyone feel excited and included. I have heard accusations about this club, saying that they are not inclusive toward people of certain racial or ethnic backgrounds, however this was not my experience at this event. There must have been about 200 people participating in the event in some form, because we were in one of those huge theatres on campus. I arrived late, while others were completing a scavenger hunt of some kind. We were put into groups of about 15 people with an executive team leader assigned to us, and were supposed to cheer with all the other groups. There must have been about 15-20 groups of people by the time everyone came back. Most of the cheers were pretty innocent and cute, but some were rather sexualized and the word “erotic” seems like the best word to describe them. Of course, there is nothing inherently wrong with this, I am not pointing this out as a moral issue of some kind. I cannot stress enough that I saw nothing but inclusivity and friendliness from executives and participants at this event. In fact, many leaders told us we should interview for executive positions when we were leaving the event.

In trying to understand these vivid sexual expressions exhibited by mostly men in this case, of Asian heritage from a very superficial measurement (their appearance), I believe there is something to be said about a cultural factor. If you ask my parents what they were doing in the 1960s or 70s after school, they might mention (as they once did to me) the sheer volume of alcohol consumed at parties (“enough to fill a swimming pool, I’m sure”). If you ask someone who’s parents are from Mainland China what they were doing after school in the 1960s period under Mao, it would probably sound a little bit different to say the least. I am not an expert in Chinese history, nor am I an expert in history of any kind for that matter, however, I don’t think you need a PHD in cultural studies to know that the sexual, liberal renaissance that erupted in North American culture in the 1960s was certainly not something experienced in China at the same time.

Different cultural memories can help to explain different expressions of different cultural contexts. In attempting to understand what I observed, I am hypothesizing that this difference in cultural history plays a key role. Writing in 1961, just as North American society was entering the period I described above, Erving Goffman published his seminal work on Asylums as institutions and how they socialize, erase, maintain, and create new identities. In it, he talks of something he calls “secondary adjustments”, which basically refers to the coping mechanisms individuals were observed or theorized to use to adjust to their new home in an institution. While Political Scientists tend to understand institutions as the presence of formalized rules determining how decisions are arrived at and negotiated, Sociologists tend to understand institutions as the actors or organizations and processes which empower those actors to formalize those decisions. UBC, under this perspective, is a kind of institution because it has formalized procedures for determining the rules (which students can negotiate) shaping how and when students are able to attain their university degrees.

Such rules, to varying degrees for students depending on their social location, are constraining. According to Goffman, “one of these types of secondary adjustment is ‘removal activities’, namely, undertakings that provide something for the individual to lose himself in… in much the same way that college students are able to survive their studies by looking forward to the new dates that may be found in their extracurricular activities.” It doesn’t have to be so deep or complicated, in the sense that I think this was a form of expression that is simply not available to students within the day-to-day reality of our lives as students at UBC. If you were to take off your shirt and pants and twerk it on the steps of Buchanan, you might be reported for indecent exposure to the university. It is also a form of power, considering that everyone doing the dirty moves at the event was, in the most loose and popular understanding of the term, good looking, relatively well defined and fit. This is an opportunity to gain some human agency within the comfort of a group of people of the same generational ideological or cultural context, in a college setting. I also agree with Goffman when he explains that identity is constructed negatively- that is you see what other people talk about and identify as, and this helps you to understand who you are by your negative reactions toward things that do not correlate to your identity. Since sociological perspectives on group behaviour say that there is a significant connection between the symbols we are surrounded with and the meanings we attach to behaviours, I believe that human sexuality is one of the most fascinating ways we can explore identity. I think that these raunchy movements, cheers, and if you take it a step further- attitudes exhibited at the event were also a product of group behaviour in negatively defining and redefining identity. That is, a social permission to “act out” or in ways that would transgress stark mores or even moral lines in their home life and day-to-day life. These expressive acts are in some ways validating, in others an outlet, but in many ways “safe” as well because while they are not socially permissible in most day-to-day public settings, they are still following strict masculine and feminine norms and demarcations of gender-based behaviour.

There are many Sociology and other disciplines-based approaches to the topic of gender. One of these is West and Zimmerman’s groundwork for describing femininity and masculine performance in the everyday . We know the common tropes- “active masculinity” and “passive femininity”, well in accordance with what I saw at the event. However, it wasn’t a seemingly conscious or power-driven behaviour. These sexually-frosted communications, body movements, dances, and cheers sugar coated just about every element of the event. This was performance at its best, and West and Zimmerman do a great job of showing how these displays are very much informed by popular culture. According to them, “popular culture abounds with books and magazines that compile idealized depictions of relations between men and women” (135). They continue, “however, the use of any such source as a manual of procedure requires the assumption that doing gender merely involves use of discrete, well-defined bundles of behaviour that can simply be plugged into interactional situations to produce recognizable enactments of femininity and masculinity” (135). As West and Zimmerman argue, popularly mediated conceptions of masculinity and femininity are not all created equal. They are perceived differently based on social location, I believe, and therefore you will see inherently different reactions, responses, and perhaps even performances according to cultural differences. In the case of my experiences at a Chinese Varsity Club event, these incredibly active male performances were explained by an institutional and socially mediated space on campus, a place in the life course understood to be as a socially mandated area of life transition, especially in the North American setting. The cultural memories of those from North American backgrounds will be quick to connect the historical period of the 1960s to sexual expression and experimentation on campus. I argue that this was an element explaining a more liberal regard to “socially lubricating” an event with sexualized expressions.

* Citation for West and Zimmerman: West, Candace and Don Zimmerman (1987). “Doing Gender” in Gender and Society 1(2): pp 125-51

The title says it all – this will be an account of the day I lost a part of my dignity (exactly three inches off of it) at UBC.

A little bit of a context, this title was also the title I used for the paper for which my social experiment was for. As a sociology student, social experiments are not something new to me, but this particular one was quite challenging.

The Context

I’m Ivan Arlantico, a third-year (officially, at least) Sociology major at the University of British Columbia. I am ethnically Chinese-Filipino, born and raised in the Philippines and now a permanent resident residing in Vancouver. (This will be relevant in a second, I promise.) For this term, I’m taking a sociology course with the title: Social Movements.

Interesting right? It gets better.

One of our assignments in the course is to break a social norm related to a social movement. Think feminist movement and wearing pants way back when. So we need to all do something similar – pick a movement, do something that’s NOT considered normal, and then write about the whole experience.

What did I pick? The LGBTQ movement and wearing three-inch peep toe pumps to school.

The Experiment

I bought the shoes – I had to, I didn’t know anyone who’s feet are as huge as mine and would lend me shoes – and picked a date I’d wear them to school. I planned on wearing them to school for a whole day (all my female friends were against it, some just thought it was  going to be too painful, some were concerned about the stares, looks, and comments I’d get). But I brought a pair of “regular” shoes just in case.

So I was wearing my regular clothes – a hoodie and black jeans – BUT with heels instead of my regular sneakers.

The Outcome

I wore them to one class – JUST ONE CLASS – and I had to take them off.

No, it wasn’t because they were painful.

Not even because I couldn’t walk in them.

I had to take them off because I couldn’t take the amount of reactions I was getting – my classmates staring at me and then whispering. It did not matter what they were whispering about, they could be saying all sorts of great things about my fashion choice, JUST THE FACT THAT THEY WERE WHISPERING AND NOT TELLING ME THINGS DIRECTLY BOTHERED ME SO MUCH. I couldn’t take it, I had to remove the shoes.

That was when I lost three inches off my dignity.

It made me realize that I did not have what it takes to stand up and stand out – I was uncomfortable with not conforming. I could just think of all the people who are fighting for their rights, for equality, and for recognition, and I could see them all probably disappointed in how I copped-out of my “stand” for gender-equality.

I thought it would be easy to say: “I’m wearing heels because I believe that people should not be judged by what they are wearing.” And it was, it was easy to say, problem was, not everyone had time to listen to what I had to say. Everyone just looked at me, and judged me however they saw fit.

So, UBC?

This whole exercise made me realize one thing: UBC has a dress-code for students.

Okay, bear with me, I know it’s probably super obvious for some people – or totally new for someone. Either way, it’s more profound than it sounds.

I came to UBC last year, this is only my second year here, and I remember a bunch of orientation events – and not one of them addressed dress-code. I don’t remember being given any rundowns on needing to conform to any dress-code as a UBC student! I don’t think there was even any mention that UBC has a dress-code.

Okay, maybe I did not get the memo, but still.

I never felt more socialized (or indoctrinated) into UBC  than at that moment — that moment when I was forced to change my shoes because it did not conform with the UBC standard.

Reflective Theory (ish)

As a sociology student for, well, years, I cannot help but theorize and see this whole experience through a sociological lens. What do I mean?

This whole thing with me and UBC and dressing “appropriately” (and by appropriately I mean dressing-in-a-way-where-I-don’t-get-weird-looks-from-everyone) made me realize how powerless individuals often are in situations where the society at large dictates what should and should not be. Choosing to wear peep toe pumps to school is me exercising my agency (or my personal power to make decisions and act), changing back into sneakers was me losing that agency in fear of the consequences of my going against the acceptable norm (or whatever people, or majority of the society considers normal).

This is what Foucault mentions in his work Discipline and Punish as internalized control and the panopticon.

Fancy terms. But basically – panopticon refers to a type of architecture used for prisons where there’s a tower in the middle and … well, let me just show you.

So basically, there’s a tower in the middle where the guards are and the prisoners are in the rooms around it. The goal is for the guards to always see the prisoners but the prisoners will not see the guards — so they never know when someone is there, they just know that THERE IS A POSSIBILITY that they’re being watched but they’re never certain.

What does this have to do with society? Well, Foucault says people internalize this control. We act like these prisoners — we always feel like we’re being watched and then we do what is expected of us because we’re afraid of the consequences!

I took the shoes off, because I was afraid of the ridicule and whatever other people might have in store for me for “breaking the norm.” There were not any formal sanctions, but I felt it. There really isn’t any other way of explaining it, but just that I felt it.

Try it. Try doing something that is not considered “normal” and see how it feels. (Don’t do something criminal though, that has very tangible consequences!)

What am I trying to say?

Next time you wear something to or do something while at UBC, think about why you’re doing it.

Who are you following? What “rules” do you observe as normal?

References:

Foucault, Michel (1975/2012) “From Discipline and Punish.” In Scott Appelrouth and Laura Desfor Edles. Classical and Contemporary Sociological Theory (2^nd edition). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Pine Forge Press. Pp. 622-636