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.

At the beginning of the school term, I attended an orientation event at the Place Vanier first-year residence where one of my old high school acquaintances, Steven, was staying. This was a casual meet-and-greet organized by the local residents association, intended to allow new residents of each pair of “sister” houses to get to know each other. The particular pair of houses that my friend was a part of were gender segregated, where he and his all-male house was matched with another all-female house. In many ways, this was a typical introductory event – it was held outdoors in fair weather, background music was playing, and some complimentary beverages were provided by the residents association. Yet its workaday appearance in no way made it exempt from being a site for the enactment of a plethora of social patterns and scripts. In a conversation I had with a group of four male first-year students, I witnessed firsthand two interrelated patterns of socialization that were employed as a topic of conversation and as a bonding tool – compulsory heterosexuality and sexual essentialism.

In order to make sense of some of my observations and explain these two concepts, I will be drawing upon chapter four of Mariana Valverde’s Sex, Power and Pleasure. Here, she explains her ideas on how the “cultural myth” of sexual essentialism obstructs our understanding of the fluidity of sexual identities and the existence of bisexuality (111). She also gives an overview of Adrienne Rich’s concept of compulsory heterosexuality (114). These will form the conceptual backbone for my interpretation of my experience conversing with the four young men. Incidentally, these students were all fluent in English, having spent most if not all of their lives either in Canada or the United States. Three of them appeared to be Caucasian and the one that appeared to be Asian identified as an ethnic Korean. My analysis, based on notes that I took after attending this orientation, will be focused on how the micro-interaction that occurred was a specific expression of the constructs that Valverde and Rich identify as well as an illustration of how their theories are interrelated. I suggest that these theorists allow us to see the short conversation that I witnessed as a microcosmic part of wider patterns that circulate throughout society.

The interaction that is the subject of this blogpost began after we had all introduced ourselves and engaged in quite a bit of small talk regarding our backgrounds, faculties, and interests. During a momentary lull in the conversation, Stan (all the names used in this post are pseudonyms), one of the Caucasian students, asked the group whether we had “[liked] what we had seen so far” accompanied by a suggestive smirk. When the rest of the group answered in a generally noncommittal fashion, he followed up by saying, “Oh come on, you can’t tell me you guys don’t think she’s hot”, gesturing surreptitiously to a girl nearby. Jokingly, he added, “I mean, you’d have to be dead.” While this elicited tentative expressions of approval from the other guys in the group, I responded truthfully that I disagreed and that I was “not straight.” At this, Stan replied, “Oh well, if you’re gay, that’s different.”

While this was a short, casual piece of conversation – it took less than a minute and the subject was not brought up again – it is a great example of how individual, seemingly insignificant interactions are informed by social patterns. Stan’s comments on the attractiveness of the girls of the residence sister-house are informed by his partial understanding of the social structure that Rich identifies as “compulsory heterosexuality”. As Valverde explains, this concept describes how society presents heterosexuality “as the norm”, as a universal experience shared by everybody except for those labeled and punished as deviants (114). The social forces that make heterosexuality compulsory also make it appear “natural” (114). When Stan asked us whether we found any of the girls at the event attractive, he was relying upon the implicit assumption that as “naturally” heterosexual young men, we were bound to do so. When our response did not “live up” to this premise, he appealed further to social norms by referring to a stereotypically good-looking (from a heterosexual perspective) female student. By adding that we would “have to be dead” to disagree, Stan continued to draw upon his partial understanding of compulsory heterosexuality by implying that as young men, we had no choice but to be allured by an archetypal example of the heterosexist standard of female beauty.

Interestingly enough, despite my expressed deviance from compulsory heterosexuality in my refusal to deem the girl in question as attractive and my identification as “not straight”, I was not socially “punished” in the classic sense (114). This is most likely due to the increasing social and institutional acceptance of homosexuality that has occurred in Canada and more generally amongst Western countries since Rich wrote in 1980. Still, I was positioned as outside “the norm” by Stan (“that’s different”) and as such subject to a minor degree of social awkwardness (judging by his expression and those of the others in the group). However, perhaps the most interesting part of his statement was his assumption that I am gay. In fact, based on the information that I provided (“I’m not straight”), the only logical conclusion that he could infer would be only that I am not heterosexual. His assumption that I could only be one of two sexualities – homo- or heterosexual – draws from another social pattern that is identified by Valverde as the cultural myth of “sexual essentialism” (117). This is assumption that, barring extremely rare exceptions, “everyone is “really”… either gay or straight” (111). As Valverde explains, this myth supposed “that we all have some inner core of sexual truth” which pre-determines our sexualities and precludes the possibility of fluidity and change (111). Ergo, given that I was not straight, sexual essentialism dictated that I must be gay.

Of course, in reality, there exists considerable fluidity in people’s lived experiences of sexuality, particularly amongst women (112). What is important to realize is that Stan’s reproduction of sexual essentialism has social consequences in that it participates in an erasure of actual sexual fluidity. Attitudes and actions informed by sexual essentialism make it difficult for fluid sexual identities (such as pansexuality, bisexuality, uncategorized sexual identities, etc.) to be recognized, understood, and accepted. Similarly, his heterosexist comments participate in an erasure of non-heterosexual identities. Resisting these conformist tendencies means that we have to recognize that even small, seemingly insignificant actions and words can contribute to discrimination. My goal for this post is not to simply illuminate an academically interesting relationship between theory and reality – it is to raise more awareness of the subtle ways in which inequality can function. Next time you encounter a situation that seems to make you or others uncomfortable, ask yourself if any sort of implicit discrimination may be occurring. Only by interrogating our common sense assumptions can we rid ourselves of inequality as a society.

References:

Valverde, Mariana. Sex, power and pleasure. Canadian Scholars’ Press, 1985.
Weblink: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4315933

For the last five months, I have been volunteering with an organization called Pivot Legal in the Downtown Eastside (DTES) neighbourhood of Vancouver. Pivot is dedicated towards improving the lives of residents in this low-income neighbourhood by implementing social change on many levels of society.⁽¹⁾ As part of this aim, they operate a project called Megaphone, which is a micro-enterprise streetpaper which they sell to DTES residents.⁽²⁾ In turn, these “vendors” would sell Megaphone to members of the general public for a profit. During my time volunteering, one of my tasks was to manage the sale of Megaphone papers to the vendors. As such, I was able to observe this program over a prolonged period of time and gain a sense of how this micro-enterprise was able to contribute to a sense of belonging, identity, and community for residents of the DTES.

For a neighbourhood where many struggle to make ends meet, the Megaphone program provided an important source of income for the provision of basic necessities. Our vendors are generally unemployed, so this formed a significant part of their subsistence. Additionally, being able to play an active part in earning their own income (by selling papers, building relationships with customers, etc.) often cultivated a sense of pride and self-worth. I spoke to several vendors who spoke positively about being able to “run” their own micro-enterprise, how selling papers gave them something valuable to do with their time and allowed them to subvert stereotypical, discriminatory notions of the “lazy” unemployed. Thus, Megaphone was able to contribute to the perceived self-worth of DTES residents.

Megaphone also serves as a vehicle for the communal identity of the DTES. The fact that most of the contributors to this paper are residents from the DTES, including vendors themselves, means that it is a platform for airing ideas about what the DTES actually is, what living here actually means to its residents. This is reflected in countless articles, interviews, and op-eds concerned with the culture, achievements, and general self-conception of the DTES community. Through Megaphone, residents were able to 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. In a media culture that generally views the DTES in the negative – as a problem, a dangerous place, an aesthetic blight – Megaphone is an opportunity for locals to recast their community in a better light, to form a distinct self-identity that people could feel attachment and belonging to. Examples of this include articles chronicling the fight against gentrification, the campaign against abusive landlords, communal festivities, and the organization of art and photography contests.

By providing a source of income for its vendors and by serving as a platform for the sharing of ideas, Pivot’s Megaphone program helps people in the DTES to build a positive social identity both at the individual and communal levels. It is a great example of a grassroots-level initiative that implements positive social change in a way that reflects the needs and local sensibilities of the community which it serves.

1)      “About.” Pivot Legal Society. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 Sept. 2014. <http://www.pivotlegal.org/about>.
A link to Pivot’s website describing their mission statement and work in greater detail.

2)      “Hope in Shadows.” Pivot Legal Society. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 Sept. 2014. <http://www.pivotlegal.org/hope_in_shadows>.
Refer to the “Vendor Program” section to learn more about the Megaphone project.

It is quite popular amongst qualitative feminist researchers nowadays to include so-called “positioning papers” within their research. These papers give an account of the researcher’s relationship, both personal and otherwise, to their research subject in order to increase the transparency and accountability of their research project. The reason they are included is because feminist theory believes that all knowledge begins from “standpoints” that are situated depending on a person/group’s position within society. ⁽¹⁾  From this perspective, research becomes knowledge produced from the socially situated “standpoint” of the researcher.As such, providing context about their own connection to the material (ie. what motivates them, what goals they have, how they are emotionally invested in their research) helps readers better assess the knowledge that they generate.

While my fellow classmates and I are not qualitative researchers in a formal sense, we will be doing at least some qualitative research – over the next few months, we will be recording and analyzing our observations of social life on this blog, particularly in relation to issues of social identity.⁽²⁾ Therefore, I would like to start with a small positioning paper of sorts where I will give a brief account of how I came to see the world through the lens of the social – in other words, how individual and group behaviours are shaped by norms and interactions that originate from society at large.⁽³⁾

It began with the rather unexpected discovery that I was attracted to men. In my first year at university, I happened across a football game on television – I suppose most of us would call it soccer. It is ironic because I have no interest in sports at all, yet to this day I remember that it was a Spanish team; that a goal had just been scored; that he had dark hair and tanned skin; that his shirt rode up when he leapt in exhilaration. Over the next few weeks and months, a deep sense of confusion set in – not that this desire existed, but that it was somehow lacking. Not in passion, authenticity, moral value or any of those other stereotypical notions. Rather, what it was lacking in was information – the kind that told you what you wanted, what to anticipate, and what to look for. You see, I had been attracted to girls before. Those sentiments always came with what I realized was an immense bundle of pre-packaged knowledge that told you what a boy and girl should do (hold hands, date); what wanting each other meant (having sex); what they could expect (roses, a family). Together, these strands of knowledge form a veritable guidebook that leads you through every aspect and every stage of your desire – from the awkward fumbling of first times to late-night walks in the moonlight, it tells you what to expect and how to expect it. Most importantly, it tells you what desire actually means. Without it, desire is just a sudden reaction to external stimuli, little more than a shot in the dark. And that was all I had.

Gradually, I came to realize that it made no sense if sexuality is innate, as most believe, that I should have so much knowledge available to my heterosexual inclinations and so little attached to my homosexual ones. The only plausible alternative? That society is the actual source of our sexual knowledge, that it plays a dominant role in shaping our desires. As I became increasingly conscious of this fact and as it began to infuse my worldview on an intuitive level, I gained the ability to observe my own sexual development. I was able to “track” changes over time, making note of how new experiences and ideas that I came across had an effect on my preferences and expectations. Gradually, a whole new world became available to me as I applied what I understood about my sexual identity to other aspects of social life: gender, employment, politics, etc. With the aid of coursework, I continued my avid exploration of this new lens in increasing detail – what are the ramifications of economic marginalization, of education policy, of homeless ordinances? Nowadays, I can hardly look at an issue without wondering about its social origins and what kinds of implications it might have. This is the perspective that I bring to the table – an understanding of the sociological perspective that is intimately connected to me on both personal and intellectual levels and one that I likely will not tire of exploring anytime soon.

1)      Bowell, T. “Feminist Standpoint Theory.” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 Sept. 2014. <http://www.iep.utm.edu/fem-stan/#H4>.
This website offers a more in-depth explanation of feminist standpoint theory and its relationship to qualitative research and knowledge production in general.

2)      “What Is Qualitative Research?” Qualitative Research Consultants Association. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 Sept. 2014. <http://www.qrca.org/?page=whatisqualresearch>.
A quick, easy-to-understand explanation of what qualitative research is.

3)      Flores, Laura. “What Is Social Constructionism.” Oakes College – University of Santa Cruz. N.p., n.d. Web. 9 Sept. 2014. <http://oakes.ucsc.edu/academics/Core%20Course/oakes-core-awards-2012/laura-flores.html>.
This link explains the “sociological perspective” by using examples of social inequality from the areas of gender, sex, class, and race. It is very useful for those new to the idea of social constructionism.