5
Race and Ethnicity SAE
IN THE FOLLOWING FIVE CHAPTERS, we will play out some SAE scenarios that we have observed, researched, or been told about by people who have experienced these situations. There are so many varied SAE that people experience along different dimensions of diversity that the examples included represent only a small fraction of what we might have written about. The identifying details, including names and some contexts, have been redacted or changed. But the subtle acts of exclusion are real. While we cannot describe the situations in their full complexity, we offer readers a sense of the events and feelings accompanying the SAE. In addition, we describe any accountability as it was experienced. If accountability was absent, we describe accountability alternatives as described in previous chapters. These “What could have been” scenarios are inherently hypothetical, and there are many factors at play in whether people speak up and how others react to them. But in this book, we lean into that complexity to explore options and hopefully move closer to fuller SAE accountability.
How We See Gender and Sexuality
Before jumping into SAE related to gender and sexuality, it’s first important to clarify how we think about those topics, because there is a lot of confusion and conversation about them. For some of you this section will sound overly basic and obvious; feel free to skip ahead. But for others, there is a lot of confusion and we don’t take for granted that everyone is on the same page.
Let’s start with babies. When babies are born, they are assigned a biological sex. This is related to visible reproductive organs—a penis or a vagina. Most of the time, the sex assigned is as binary male or female. For some babies, however, it’s not so clear. These babies are often called intersex. You may think that being born intersex is extremely rare, but some estimates place it at about the same as having red hair (approximately 1 to 2 percent of the population).1 A percentage of those cases don’t appear as clearly intersex until puberty, while others (approximately one in 2,000 babies born) show a mix of male and female genitalia right at birth. In those cases, many doctors pressure parents to choose a sex and perform surgery so that genitals match the assigned sex of the baby. This surgery is extremely controversial; many argue that it is unethical.
That’s what people mean when they talk about “biological sex.” “Gender” is related to the ideas that go along with that biological sex. What are men like? What are women like? Parents talk about how their boys “naturally” love to play with trucks while their girls just “naturally” gravitate toward playing make believe with dolls. While this book is not going to get into the debate about whether there are any biological differences like that between the sexes, we will say that research suggests many of these characteristics that people think are natural are in fact socialized by cultural expectations and interpersonal interactions from the earliest years.
Once people have a baby that has been assigned the sex of a girl, many parents not only dress her in pink and decorate her room differently, but they interact differently with her. They give her certain toys and not others. They talk to her in a gendered way. This starts from day one. And it infuses almost every aspect of the way people interact with that baby. By the time that child is a toddler, they have been treated dramatically differently from a boy baby by almost everyone around them.
Developing children are picking up on much more than we give them credit for—in the environment, in the interactions, and in the culture. Their brains are developing at a staggering rate—one to two million synaptic connections are being formed per second.2 When that girl is a toddler and likes to play make believe with dolls and it looks “natural” to adults, it may actually be something that has been subtly, almost invisibly conditioned that appears natural. If our culture were to radically shift the way we raise children in this gendered way, gender itself would be expressed differently.
As these children grow, the majority feel that the ideas about gender surrounding them pretty much match how they feel about themselves. Of course, there is a range. Some boys seem to exemplify the stereotypic representations of “boyness”—they love sports, play rough, can’t sit still, etc.—while others don’t. But within that range, most feel that they were assigned the sex that matches how they feel about their gender identity. These people (who feel that their assigned sex matches their gender identity) can be called cisgender, or cis. Most people just think of them as “normal,” a problematic construction because of the way it excludes everyone else as “not normal.”
The people who do not feel that their gender identity matches the sex they were assigned at birth may consider themselves transgender (or trans) and may alter their outward gender expression to match the gender identity that they feel represents who they are. They may change their name and their gender pronoun to match this changed gender identity.
Other people, and the numbers of people in this group are continually increasing, may feel that they don’t identify as strictly male or strictly female. They may then identify as gender nonconforming, gender fluid, or gender nonbinary. Coauthor Jana falls into this category. People who identify as nonbinary or nonconforming may also prefer to use a different pronoun to reflect their identity, which may be a gender neutral pronoun such as “they” and “them,” as in Jana’s case, or one of the less common pronouns like “ze.”
Some people may believe that transgender or nonbinary people are something new and unique. However, anthropologists and other social scientists have documented cases of other cultures that have gender constructions that include options beyond just a binary male and female. We are strongly of the opinion that all people should be free to express their gender in any way that makes them feel like themselves as an individual and that all these various gender identifications and expressions should be not only equally valued, but considered equally normal.
So far, we have discussed biological sex and gender. Sexuality is about who people are attracted to sexually and romantically. People who identify as men and who are attracted to people who identify as women would be called “heterosexual” as would people who identify as women who are attracted to those who identify as men. People who identify as men who are attracted to others who identify as men would be called “homosexual” or “gay,” and those who identify as women who are attracted to others who identify as women would also be called “homosexual” or “gay,” or “lesbian.”
Just as with gender, sexuality is not just binary. If it seems as if it is binary, that’s because of the way our culture tells us what is normal or natural. In fact, many people may be attracted to people of any gender but may feel that they must choose only one because of societal expectations. Or people may choose to explicitly date anyone they want, and may call themselves “bisexual” or “pansexual.” Of course, gender and sexuality are much more complicated than that, and the ways that people think about themselves and who they are attracted to are constantly evolving. For that reason, it’s especially important to always be learning and listening to others who identify as different from you. These kinds of productive SAE conversations are perfect for that.
In this chapter we will discuss SAE that happen to women and other gender minorities, all of whom can be considered marginalized along the gender axis compared to cisgender men. And we will discuss SAE related to those who identify as other than heterosexual.
Notice the Dynamic: Practice Identifying Common SAE
Let’s look at a few gender-based SAE and see whether you can identify the operating dynamic based on the chapter 1 framework of what the subtle act of exclusion is implicitly communicating. Recall the taxonomy from chapter 1:
▶ You are invisible.
▶ You are inadequate.
▶ You are not an individual.
▶ You don’t belong.
▶ You are not normal.
▶ You are a curiosity.
▶ You are a threat.
▶ You are a burden.
Read each of the following situations and think about what is happening. How might each group or individual be feeling?
▶ Situation 1: People extend a hand to introduce themselves to the male in a mixed-gender group, assuming he’s the person in charge.
▶ What kind of SAE is happening?
▶ How might the woman in charge be feeling?
▶ How might the assumed male leader be feeling?
▶ How might the informed bystanders be feeling?
▶ Situation 2: A man is given credit for an idea that a woman had already explained during a meeting.
▶ What kind of SAE is taking place?
▶ How might the woman be feeling?
▶ How might the man be feeling?
▶ How might the other meeting participants be feeling?
▶ Situation 3: Employees are overheard making broad gender generalizations or jokes in the workplace.
▶ What kind of SAE is being described?
▶ How might gender minorities feel if they overhear the jokes?
▶ How might inclusion allies be feeling?
In the first situation, folks are assuming that the man is in charge based on a bias (unconscious or not) that men are generally leaders. In the second, people are elevating male status and authority, giving more weight to an idea when the man said it. And in the third scenario, people are minimizing gender by making light of it and reinforcing a binary, stereotypical gender culture.
The taxonomy can be applied as follows:
▶ Situation 1: Assuming the man is in charge implicitly communicates that the female leader is inadequate for leadership.
▶ Situation 2: Giving a man credit for a woman’s previously stated idea renders her invisible.
▶ Situation 3: Making gender jokes and generalizations in the workplace makes the subjects feel they don’t belong.
The interesting thing to note here is that in each of these three scenarios, there were observers. These SAE took place in the presence of people who experienced the dynamic alongside the subjects. If they speak up, they could become allies.
Subtle acts of exclusion are tricky. They are, by their very nature, easy to miss or ignore, especially if you are not the person being offended or excluded. At one point early in the book-writing process, it was suggested that we name this book Death by a Thousand Cuts because of the way that microaggressions tend to follow people and cause increasing harm over time. Upon further thought, we realized, however, that the expression itself could be considered a microaggression.
“Death by a thousand cuts” is the translation of a specific type of torture and execution previously used in China, Korea, and Vietnam. Using that expression casually to draw a metaphor for microaggressions, while viscerally poignant, is culturally insensitive. And therein lies the rub. We weren’t trying to be insensitive, but that fact does not alter the reality that bandying about interesting cultural references can still have the effect (impact) of exclusion, even if subtle and unrecognized by most people.
Gender has long been the cause of a wide variety of explicit acts of exclusion, structural inequalities, unfair and gendered expectations, and subtle acts of exclusion. Subtle acts of exclusion related to gender happen so frequently that we struggled to narrow down the examples we wanted to discuss in this chapter. Examples of gender SAE are extremely common in workplaces but also in the home as women and gender minorities negotiate work with those who love them the most.
In the home, even among progressive and equality-minded men, gender expectations run deep and they may come to the surface even more so if a couple has children. In fact, a recent New York Times opinion article entitled “What ‘Good’ Dads Get Away With”3 virally passed among moms who shared commiseration and stories of their “good” husbands/dads. Examples include cluelessness (“Oh, there’s no school tomorrow?”), forgetfulness, or just not seeing certain tasks as important (folding laundry), and using being “more laid-back” as an excuse to not share household tasks equally.
Even when SAE are happening in the home, they affect women in the workplace too. As the extra burdens take a toll on women (physically, mentally, emotionally), they impact the ease with which women are able to devote time to their jobs and they make it so that many women temporarily leave their jobs or take part-time work to raise children, which then limits their advancement when they are ready to return full time. It’s hard to neatly separate the domains. In the following examples, we focus on a few of the more common and illustrative SAE that happen to women and gender minorities in their workplaces. Some examples are provided with more detail, in story form, beginning with the following example.
EXAMPLE: Cutting women off during work meetings and not giving them credit for their ideas
It’s your division leadership monthly meeting and you are discussing strategy for increasing future growth in the face of declining market share. Tanya shares her idea that perhaps increasing the diversity of the team and including different perspectives would increase creativity and innovation. She gets very little acknowledgment for this idea. A few more suggestions are made. Then Randall looks around the room and suggests that he notices a distinct lack of diverse perspectives, especially women, which could be one reason for the lack of innovation. Randall gets acknowledged widely for having an important thought, and a decision is made to look at pipeline initiatives for getting more diverse perspectives into senior management.
Does this example sound familiar to you? If you are a woman in the corporate world, it likely feels all too familiar. Countless anecdotal examples and even systematic research bears this out.4 This is a clear example of an SAE that is communicating, “You are invisible.” If this happens repeatedly to women in meetings, strategy sessions, team planning, and other work contexts, there are several consequences.
Women may become disengaged in the work because they feel as if their contributions and efforts are not being seen. This is a normal and common reaction when someone is excluded by being made to feel invisible. When that happens, the work itself suffers, as it does not have the benefit of the full engagement of all team members. Additionally, if this happens, women may end up leaving the job and seeking a workplace culture where they are not invisible and can make a meaningful contribution. Finally, it affects happiness and satisfaction. Everyone wants to be seen, valued, and heard at work, and when we are not, it takes a toll on our mental state. The SAE affect the individual, the work product, the work culture, and the organization’s bottom line.
What could potentially be done if you see this happening in your workplace? This is a great example of a time when an ally can be especially effective. If the woman who was cut off or not given credit speaks up, she can be seen as selfishly trying to advance herself. But if someone else in the meeting points out how Tanya had already mentioned that, it gives Tanya credit in what might be a more comfortable way. Everyone in those meetings can look for opportunities to speak up about SAE like that. In addition, when people at an organization know that this is likely to happen, they can practice disrupting and preventing this kind of SAE from even happening in the first place. People can practice active listening, they can develop policies for equal speaking time for all, and they can improve inclusive leadership practices.
The following are a few more examples of workplace gender-based SAE.
1. The women feel obligated to clean up after office parties/functions whereas the men don’t.
2. The women are expected to tidy up the office kitchen or serve coffee.
3. The woman in a meeting is asked to take notes.
4. A woman is told to do any of the previous in a professional setting when it is not expressly part of her assigned job duties.
Notice the similarities between the first and second statements. In the first statement, women feel a sense of obligation to perform a stereotypically domestic duty often relegated to women. In the second sentiment, the expectation is external—or someone else is imposing their bias onto the target. The first is a form of internalized oppression, when marginalized groups unknowingly accept or “buy in” to some of the stereotypical or negative messages propagated about them and act accordingly.5
The third statement is a more overt SAE because the idea is being expressed aloud, although still in question format. Sometimes it is easy to fall into the trap of believing that if we present a question, the respondent has a choice. We will say more on this later. The fourth statement is the least subtle of the four SAE.
So here we see four very similar SAE constructs that affect women and gender minorities in the workplace. You can see how they range from internalized microaggression to fully expressed imperatives. The following four constructs relate back to the four examples listed previously in the same order:
1. Internalized marginalization
2. Stereotyped expectation (systemic/societal)
3. Indirect SAE (false choice/benevolent bias)
4. Direct SAE (fully expressed—stated, depicted, written, etc.)
By now you may be thinking to yourself, “OK great. SAE are a thing. Now what?” Now we get to the fun part, or the hard part—depending on how you feel about personal development work. We happen to love it. We believe that in an increasingly diverse world with increased access to information and to visiting new places, we have an obligation to grow together and learn to embrace humankind in a more complete and loving way. The authors of this book share the perspective of diversity practitioners and researchers, and as such, we are proponents of the introspective work required to be an ally and evolve into embracing inclusive behaviors that build community. All work related to diversity, equity, and inclusion begins with oneself. You must take on the task of understanding the role you play in perpetuating bias.
Consider Workplace Boundaries
Some SAE happen because people take their curiosity, concern, or nosiness a little too far. In the workplace context, some things are not your nor the company’s business. Read the following three scenarios then consider the follow-up questions.
▶ Situation 1: An employee makes statements implying that a mother isn’t as committed to work because she has family obligations.
▶ Are her family obligations any of the employee’s concern?
▶ Has she expressed an inability or lack of desire to complete her work obligations?
▶ Situation 2: A vendor says, “The women here are doing an amazing job, considering all they have to balance with the family too.”
▶ Again, are their family obligations any of the vendor’s concern?
▶ Is the second part of that statement necessary?
▶ Would the same thing be said of a man?
▶ Situation 3: During an interview or when considering a promotion, a manager asks subtly probing questions to ascertain if a woman is interested in having children.
▶ Is it legal to ask about parental status during an interview?
▶ What is the connection between having children and the ability to perform the new position?
Here again is the taxonomy:
▶ You are invisible.
▶ You are inadequate.
▶ You are not an individual.
▶ You don’t belong.
▶ You are not normal.
▶ You are a curiosity.
▶ You are a threat.
▶ You are a burden.
Now apply the taxonomy:
▶ Situation 1: Implying that a mother isn’t committed to her work is an inadequacy subtle act of exclusion.
▶ Situation 2: Praising women for doing their job while having families is a normalcy subtle act of exclusion.
▶ Situation 3: Inserting a woman’s family planning into the workplace implies her fertility is a threat.
Workplace boundaries become very important when it comes to gender because of sex discrimination. If a woman’s desire to procreate gets in the way of a potential hire or promotion due to the possibility of maternity leave, that can be construed as sex discrimination.
Hot-Button Topics
Sometimes there is an uptick in SAE around hot-button topics as a society grapples with new ideas, or ideas that can no longer be relegated to the fringes. The conversation about gender pronouns and gender identity, for instance, has gained traction in some parts of the world. The United States, in particular, is starting to experience changes in the way people approach gender identity and its acceptance into the mainstream lexicon and culture. As far back as humanity has recorded social identities and expressions, people have chosen many different ways to express themselves. What is deemed acceptable or “normal” by any given society has always been a moving target.
Cultures associate certain behaviors, status, careers, attitudes, clothing, names, roles, and more with one gender or another. Many people have a low tolerance for or understanding of ambiguity, nonconformity, and fluidity. Interestingly, these constructs can be abstracted and applied to any manner of situations and be equally unsettling to people. So it stands to reason that when you place the concept of gender in front of the terms ambiguity, nonconformity, and fluidity, some people react with a range of emotions, from mild confusion to open anger.
Unfortunately, gender nonconformity creates cognitive dissonance for some people, which makes it a hot-button topic. Navigating any dialogue where a hot-button issue is present can be doubly daunting. This issue and how to address it is covered in coauthor Jana’s first book, Overcoming Bias: Building Authentic Relationships across Differences. Here are a few more examples of gender-based subtle acts of exclusion.
▶ Situation 1: Someone calls a woman bossy.
▶ Would they use the word “bossy” to describe a man?
▶ Are the same behaviors being rewarded in men?
▶ Situation 2: A person assumes gender identity or cisplains someone else’s nonconforming identity to them.
▶ Is it appropriate to tell other people who they are or how they should identify?
▶ What does assuming gender identity accomplish?
▶ Do we need to know a person’s gender identity?
▶ Situation 3: You make a big deal out of getting someone’s gender pronoun wrong and apologizing profusely, thereby putting the burden on the offended person to make you feel better.
▶ Are you trying to make the other person feel normal and accepted or are you looking for credit for trying?
▶ Should that offended person have to be taking care of you and your emotions or should you be taking care to make them feel comfortable?
▶ Situation 4: A woman balks at a person’s use of the pronoun “they” because “it just doesn’t make sense grammatically.”
▶ Did this woman look up whether it is grammatically correct?
▶ Does this woman think that people who prefer the pronoun “they” haven’t thought a lot about this already?
▶ Is this woman’s inconvenience at using a pronoun in a new way greater than the other person’s need to be identified properly?
▶ Situation 5: A Christian refuses to call a transgender person by their preferred pronoun for any reason.
▶ Is that person’s faith strong enough that they can treat the transgender person how they want to be treated without feeling threatened?
▶ What does it really cost you to treat people kindly as they would like to be treated?
EXAMPLE: “I wish I was a lesbian.”
Anna Dorn, a writer from Los Angeles, wrote on her blog a post called “Girl, no you don’t” about straight women telling her, “I wish I was a lesbian.”6 She says every time it happens, she wants to light herself on fire. And while she doesn’t talk about it as a microaggression, this most certainly is an SAE that the authors have heard in various forms from people with nonnormative sexualities. Some have told the authors that people tell them, “I wish I was gay. It would be so much easier just dating guys since all we want is sex,” or “I wish I was bisexual—you have so much of a bigger pool to choose from!” Most likely, people who say these things to gay and bisexual people are not meaning to exclude, but rather quite the opposite. They are likely the people trying to explicitly demonstrate that they are so comfortable with the other person’s sexuality that they would even embrace it if they were that way too.
While we don’t want to dismiss that there may be nice things about being gay or bisexual, the fact that people can so flippantly exclaim that it must be easier without recognizing how it is much more difficult to be out of the “norm” is definitely an SAE that communicates, “You (and your struggles) are invisible.” It is clearly not easier to be considered not normal—to have to go through growing up and feeling as if something is wrong with you. Suicide rates alone will tell you there is nothing easier about this—they are about five times higher for LGBTQIA young people.7 LGBTQIA youth also have higher rates of depression and substance abuse and experience higher rates of aggression and violence.
Although things are better now in many ways than they were in the past, they aren’t better for everyone. Put SAE aside for one moment and consider the reality for trans people. Trans people are exponentially more likely than cisgendered people to be overtly harassed, physically attacked, and even killed for “looking gay” and being the beautiful people they are. The brilliant performance artist and thought leader Alok Vaid-Menon explains that our trans brothers and sisters literally put their bodies on the line every day in service of LGBTQIA rights and says, “We are the reason the LGBTQIA movement is gaining momentum; because we are visible, people know you exist.”8 We have no way of knowing whether people we know have experienced this violence, this harassment, this depression, this trauma, so to assume that it’s so “easy” is an SAE of invisibility that needs to be understood.
EXAMPLE: “What does your husband do?”
Kate married her partner Crista two years ago. They debated which finger to use for their wedding rings. Should they wear them on the left hand, as traditional heterosexual couples do, or should they use the right hand to signify something else, because they are a lesbian couple? Or should they use a different finger entirely? Kate works in a large corporation, and in the end, she figured she could blend in a little more by wearing the ring on the left hand. Two years later, she is astounded by how many people notice her ring and draw conclusions from it. She has become exasperated that almost without fail, heterosexual people assume that she is married to a man. They may ask her, “What does your husband do?” or they might invite her to a work function and ask if she is going to bring her husband.
She does speak up about this subtle act of exclusion. She doesn’t make a huge deal about it, but if it’s someone she works with or meets outside work, she does tell them that her partner is a woman. She has noticed a few things from doing this many times. First, people are very apologetic after she corrects them. For the most part she thinks that’s a good thing. They seem to not only recognize that they made an incorrect assumption about her, but they also recognize that they probably make this assumption all the time. Second, she notices that those individuals that she corrects never make the same mistake again. They may initiate other SAE about her sexuality, but they never mistake her for heterosexual again. That gives her hope. But third, she also notices that it just keeps happening that people make this assumption, and she doesn’t have a lot of hope that it will end anytime soon.
One of the reasons this kind of thing seems to keep happening is because culturally we still don’t treat alternatives to heterosexuality as normal, even when we accept them. Of course, there are those who are explicitly discriminatory to LGBTQIA people. Some may base that on religion, others may base it on what they feel is “natural.” But even the people who are explicitly accepting do not treat it as normal, and that is partly because it is baked right into our cultural “common sense” of how things work.
We divide bathrooms up into men’s and women’s; we start events with, “Ladies and gentlemen”; we joke with young boys about whether they have a girlfriend; we have children’s stories that almost all completely portray heterosexual couples or so explicitly advocate celebrating non-heterosexual sexualities that the subtle message is still, “This is not normal.” There are rare exceptions to this. Coauthor Baran recalls one children’s book called Uncle Bobby’s Wedding by Sarah S. Brannen in which a man marrying a man is treated as completely normal and not even the focus of the story. The focus of the story is on the man’s relationship with his niece, who is worried that she will lose him if he gets married.9
Books like that aside, the overwhelming mass of messages that people of all ages receive is that gender binary heterosexuality is what is normal. There is little chance that a child growing up in this culture would implicitly think any different, even if they explicitly get a good number of messages celebrating LGBTQIA equality. What would it take to really treat all these gender minorities and sexualities as normal? It would just take changing the way we talk. If we are talking to a young man, it would be asking him if he has a crush on anyone rather than asking him if he has a girlfriend (or not asking the question at all because it’s a little odd). It would take seeing someone’s wedding ring and asking them if they want to bring their spouse or partner to an event and then listening for them to tell us who they are married to. It’s both a lot and a little to ask. But it’s something we must do if we are going to avoid committing these SAE that communicate to people that they are not normal.