No Diversity is Simple, But It’s Not the Right Thing to Do
By: Midori The Sea
Tags: Self Improvement, Diversity, Equality, Straight White Male, Mind

“Natural gravitation”

One of my old white man ex-bosses used to tell me “people will naturally gravitate towards each other”. He was trying to ease my concern about not fitting when I was new to the job.

That’s very true, but how do people really “natural gravitate”? You can see I’m an overthinking kind of women.

One of the most obvious answers would be through pleasant conversations.

How do two people have pleasant conversations? They can share the same humour, same interests, and/or the same attitude towards certain things. For example, people who like football will have plenty to talk about, but they might struggle if you tell them you prefer rugby to football.

That’s where the problem is.

The “natural gravitation” has pooled together people who are like-minded. This is how men have accidentally created dominance and limited diversity. If the boss is a straight white man who likes football, then the natural gravitation will be biased towards other straight white men who like football.

Sometimes a small deviation will still work, but the variation will have to meet either straight, white, men or football. If you meet one or more of these identifications, it’s a lot easier to have good conversations.

Thank God not all bosses like football, some also like food, musical, and other things; and thank God not all bosses are straight white men nowadays. However, history has made these men dominating the senior level of most situations, from family to business. As a result, it requires a lot of conformity, fighting and education for the so-called minorities to break this mass.

Opposite of natural gravitation: othering

One of the difficulties for achieving true diversity is therefore how unmotivating it is for people in power to divert from their natural gravitation towards people who are ‘exotic’ to them.

By exotic, I don’t just mean race, but also the world that they have no idea or a false idea about. We have been calling people ‘sissy’, ‘pussy’, ‘gay’ for many years now, describing a man’s behaviour as homosexual and woman-like, is clearly an ‘othering’ mentality, the opposite of natural gravitation.

Frankly, these descriptions are often not true and representative. But it doesn’t matter, the effect is segregation between “us” and “them”.

So two possible ways to encourage true diversity would therefore be a conscious reduction of othering and an expansion of natural gravitation.

1. Expansion of natural gravitation

Many men in senior positions are already trying their hardest to talk and become friends with people who they don’t naturally gravitate towards. I think this is really admirable because it takes energy to hang out with people who you might have no common topic to talk about.

To achieve true diversity, by that I mean not only doing diversity for the sake of political correctness, require a genuine relationship to be built between people and there’s only one way to do it. It’s an old, simple but by no means easy, trick: active listening.

To listen actively means to consciously switch off our built-in judgements and prejudices. When we learn about something outside of our comfort zones, from trans-life to manicure, it usually gets dull or awkward. I think many of us can empathise this because we have listened to men expressing their views on politics and football for a long ass time.

So please apply the same level of impartiality and patience when listening. In addition, please switch on curiosity. Think of learning about others like watching a David Attenborough show. It’s truly magnificent to know that an octopus can work with a grouper to hunt. Your human counterparts are equally magnificent and full of surprises, you just didn’t know that before.

It takes a conscious control of our own ego to be truly receptive, inquisitive, respectful and openminded when listening. This applies to all people, including harsh feminists who hate men. Hate has no place in equality movements, so I suggest we all focus on expanding our natural gravitation, as wide as an octopus can stretch its tentacles.

2. reduction of othering

It’s so natural for us to classify, categorise and label. Another male boss once called me “you’re such a woman” when I asked him for feedback on a task I did.

I was very confused.

One, of course, I’m a woman, and second, I’m just asking for feedback, which men should probably do more. I can’t say I was offended, I just think he is so unconscious about his othering, and that wouldn’t make him a great boss.

Othering is a technique insecure people use a lot. Just like the movie Mean Girls, where a bunch of insecure teenage girls tried to display their popularity, dominance and power by choosing who can sit with them in the school canteen. Some men are very much every day Mean Girls. Maybe they aren’t aware of it (as I said, due to natural gravitation), just like Lindsay Lohan didn’t know she was becoming “the” mean girl in the movie.

Othering genuinely shows how fragile our ego is. Egoistic people struggle to expand their natural gravitation circle because they are afraid it will show them things out of their depth. Equally, the same ego also protects themselves by giving reductionist conclusions of others so they can preserve their position.

Men are quite good at simplifying things already, and othering is a logical response for people who gear towards simplicity. It makes sense.

Because of their dominance, such behaviour is naturalised over years. Women are supposed to be maternal, black people are assumed to be criminal, trans and gay are not masculine. These are some of the most untrue comments made about others, and due to straight white men’s powerful position, these were assumed to be right.

As we are breaking these assumptions through various movements from the grassroots to the Supreme Court, many straight white men should really try to catch up.