My first diary at Booman’s place. Yay!
Adapted and crossposted from that orange thing.
This morning there was an interview of Norweigian Social Psychologist Berit Ås. Working in the 1970’s she at meetings became aware of several ways men communicated with each other that what she said was of no importance. She started to imitate these ways (getting herself coffee or turning attention to other things when someone delivered their opinion) and found that this helped in getting her own opinions heard.
She went further and from her experiences she developed a theory of what she called “The technology of ruling”.
Let’s learn something. On the flip…
Her theory included five points:
1. Making invisible.
2. Ridiculing.
3. Denial of information.
4. Double-jeopardy.
5. The imposal of guilt and shame.
Even the ordering of the points were significant. By learning to identify the five points of the technology of ruling women could, according to Ås, support each other publicly and in a descretful way, by extending the relevant number of fingers to signify wich of the points of the technology of ruling was currently in play.
Listening to this interview I directly thought about Rove, the Republican party and their shenanigans. Although Berit Ås’ theory addresses how men rule women it isn’t limited to that kind of discrimination. I think we can learn a lot from this of how to combat Roveism.
The five points above is the original points of the Technology of ruling.
Kvinnofronten – The Women’s Front in Sweden, a Feminist Organization that fights all discrimination against, and oppression of, women – has added a few points of their own:
6. Objectification
7. Violence and threats
8. Diminishance (is that a word?)
9. Complete reversal
10. Division.
Of these last five points I recognize immediately number 9 as a tactic of the wingnuts and Rove. How often have not heard from them that the majority is the suppressed?
I think we could learn a lot from the feminist movement. Republicans are denouncing the Democratic party as the ‘mother’ party. Why don’t we embrace what in their minds is a slur and start to act like it?
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What got me interested in checking this out was the interview with Berit Ås an my identification of her “Technology of ruling” with Rovian/Republican tactics. Much of the information I’ve used in this diary comes from
articles in the Swedish Wikipedia. Translation is mine.
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After doing some more research I found that
there actually is a website in English on this. What I translated as The Technology of Ruling this website calls Master suppression techniques
I also found an article in english called A Feminist University in Norway by Berit Ås.
I don’t know if Kos have a special relationship to this woman but the subtitle of this article reminds me of “Crashing the Gate”, it’s “Storming the Tower”.
Some interesting reading on women, their workload and poverty. BERIT ÅS: ARE WOMEN AFFORDABLE? (.pdf)