I usually get to my favorite fishing jetty early, when I am one of only a few people there. But as the day gets brighter and the tides get closer to their ideal high water point, the jetty begins to fill up. First is a group of older men, speaking quietly amongst themselves in a language I don’t understand. Then come the fishing-bros with expensive gear who look at my yard-sale rod and reel with curiosity and contempt. A mother and her two children show up. She stares at her phone, bored and inattentive, while her daughter and son randomly plop their bait into the water. Finally, a group of teenagers shows up, talking loudly over a radio they’ve brought, and spending equal amounts of time horsing around and casting out. Even with social distancing it gets crowded, and I make way for the newcomers, but not without reservations and a bit of resistance. None of them fish the way that I do: they are too loud, too taciturn, too serious, or not serious enough. They don’t fish with the right lures. (Everyone knows that you fish with five-inch Savage Gear Sand Eels in either silver or pearl to catch Schoolies on this jetty). But that’s not the worst of it. With the wrong lures, the wrong gear, the wrong technique, and the wrong attitudes they sometimes catch more fish than me.
Men, particularly white straight men, take up a lot of space. Nowhere is this more evident than a political meeting where some white dude will stand up and proceed to explain, with assurance and authority and volume, exactly what the situation is (no matter the situation) and precisely what is the only possible course of action (the one they suggest). If you were to ask them why they do this, they would, first, explain that it is critically important that things be done correctly if the revolution is to succeed and that they were merely sharing this crucial insight, experience, rigor, etc. Second, they would not notice they had done anything wrong at all. One of the dubious privileges of being white, male, middle-class, straight and from the USA is the belief that your way of doing things is the best way to do things, not necessarily because it is born of many years of study and experience, testing and evaluation, but because it is the only way of doing things. This is white male universalism. Most activists I work with today are younger, queerer, darker, poorer, less male and are from outside North America. They have different ways of doing things: different ideas, different styles, different approaches. My first instinct is often to stand up and man-splain how it is and how it should be done. But I’ve learned (or rather, been taught) to sit down and listen, in activist speak, “step up by stepping back.” Sometimes other people’s ideas turn out to be wrong, but most of the time they are simply different, born of that person’s particular experience and position in the world — just as mine are. This doesn’t mean that my ideas are simply “male, pale, and stale” and should be summarily dismissed, just that they aren’t the only ideas that matter, and may not be the ones that matter most. As more and more activists, the greater public, and even the power elite look less like me, these “different” ideas are more in touch with the mainstream than mine might be. After forty-odd years of being an activist, of being someone who teaches activists (and others) with assurance and authority, I am being replaced. And, in my own opinion, that’s a good idea.