Of sicknesses, sexists, statistics, and social solidarity
At the peak of the COVID 19 scare, people started hoarding masks. Even the healthy ones started wearing them.
This is ill-advised, according to public health professionals, because those who really need the masks are those who were infected, and those who came in close contact with possibly infected people.
Imagine the following example. A room has 500 people, with one person infected. Giving the mask to that one sick person is immensely more effective than making the 499 healthy ones wear them. Extending this logic, giving the mask to that one sick person is obviously more effective than boosting the immune system of the 499 others.
Now, this could be the same with how we look at programs designed to make change work for women.
At this part, I will have to use a bit of mathematics (para ma-credit sa promotion, kay indi daan credited ang creative work kay math perzen ako dapat).
Suppose, out of the entire population, only 1% of men are sexist. We are going to use the binomial distribution in this case, since we have simplified our problem to only two (hence, bi) outcomes: either a man is sexist or he is not (Caveat: In reality, of course, sexism is more complex than being just a “sexist or not” binary.).
As such, we use the following formula for s, or the probability that among the n men that a person meets, at least one (1) man is sexist:
s = 1 - pn,
where p = probability that a man is not sexist (in our example, 99%).
So, let’s say I meet 500 men (goddesses forbid!) in my life. As per our formula,
s = 1 - .99500 = .99 or 99%!
This means there is a 99% chance that at least one of those men is sexist.
Another important thing to note is this: Given the calculations that we made, if you had a room of 100 men and 100 women, it is highly likely that only one of those men were sexist but almost all of those women have felt the brunt of sexist acts.
The original poster of this concept I found said it well: Math is cruel with odds.
Now, this will of course merit a number of reactions.
Let me highlight two:
“I’ve been in a room with far fewer than 100 men, and I can assure you, more than one of them is sexist!”
“But I’m one of those 499 non-sexist men, why do I get to be called trash just because of that one sexist man?”
Of course, your reaction may also be different from these two. But whatever it may be, I urge you to think about why your reaction is such. Think about why you think the fact that you got your feelings hurt because you got lumped up with fellow sexists bears the same weight as the fact that women suffer through abuse brought about by sexism almost every single day (even if they don’t come in contact with men because guess who makes up most of the laws and policies we live by everyday?).
Now, if you’re done making this about yourself, imagine if that one sexist man in our example was given the opportunity to be better informed of the repercussions of his sexism. Imagine how many women would be spared from unnecessary abuses.
To conclude, while it is a good idea for women to enroll in self-defense lessons to “empower” themselves, it has a sense of “save yourself” mentality. Only those who have the resources to empower themselves (as with COVID analogy: buy masks, alcohol, vitamins, have the time for exercise, self-quarantine, social distancing, etc) will be able to ward off abuse. The abuse is merely passed on to the most vulnerable ones.
Hand in hand with empowering women, we must likewise educate men and cultivate an environment where the absence of sexism is the norm.
This is the same with our current health crisis situation. While we ought to be increasing our immunity, we should also provide resources for basic hygiene (soap, alcohol, WATER!) and medical services that are accessible even to our poorest communities. Any threat to the well-being of a sector of our society is a threat to us all, in one form or another. Beyond social distancing, let us practice SOCIAL SOLIDARITY (Thank you, Doc Gene Nisperos @docgene sa Twitter).
We can’t just think of saving ourselves. We are part of a community. The sooner we care for the welfare of the most vulnerable sectors of society, the sooner we’ll get over the crisis we are facing.
