How To Spark Change By Breaking Social Norms
Social norms exist to maintain the social system. This means that by following social norms and jumping through all the hoops that our culture expects of us, we end up perpetuating the injustices that exist within our culture.
Every time I didn’t make a fuss about being sexually harassed in high school, college, at work, at the gym, at the grocery store, etc. I maintained the patriarchal power structure that made it acceptable.
When I got married and buried my leadership gifts, ambition, and sense of calling because as a good Christian wife I was supposed to submit to my husband as the “leader” of our family, I perpetuated the misogyny that keeps that toxic theology in place.
By pulling my kids out of our districted, underfunded, and majority Hispanic school in California (because that’s what people like me did) and enrolling them into a small, well-funded, majority-white charter school down the street, I bolstered the horrific and ever-widening racial disparity and segregation in our country’s education system.
When I gave in to pressure by leadership at Preemptive Love Coalition to not speak out forcefully against the Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville in 2017, I helped to uphold white supremacy inside and outside of that organization.
Even little things, like every time I gave in to a man who bullied me into accepting his help when I don’t need or want it perpetuates power structures that can have insidious consequences.
Breaking social norms—even small ones—can be extremely disruptive. And while everyone loves a disruptor in stories, disruptors are rarely esteemed in real life. Women who break social norms are particularly disliked (which only compounds the disruption since women are also expected to be likable.)
So when women break social norms… God help us. The fallout can be vast.
And that is precisely why even small acts of breaking seemingly insignificant social norms can have massive ripple effects in breaking down unjust social systems and disrupting unjust power structures.
For example, not dying my prematurely-graying hair disrupts the daily messaging that women receive about youth, beauty, and aging and has compelled dozens of comments from strangers who have told me that seeing my undyed hair made them feel that perhaps they could also grow out their grays.
Uprooting my family and moving to Seattle so I could go back to school disrupted the cultural expectation that women must arrange their lives around their husbands and proposed that equal partnerships require equal sacrifice which did not go over well with some of our friends.
Choosing not to use paper plates and plastic utensils when we host BBQs (pre-covid) disrupts the unexamined American practice of putting convenience over sustainability and elicits surprisingly strong reactions from people (both positive and negative).
Refusing to laugh at racist or misogynistic “jokes” at parties and sitting straight-faced instead (or better yet, calling it out for what it is) is awkward and makes everyone uncomfortable, but it disrupts the social acceptability of those injustices.
And my use of feminine or non-gendered pronouns for God is deeply disruptive to lots of people (even though most of them would agree that God does not have a gender) because it feels disrespectful or wrong to them somehow… a notion with weighty implications that I would encourage them to examine.
Now, obviously not all social norms are unjust. Which is why this process must begin noticing social norms and understanding their implications.
We must scrutinize the social norms we’re adhering to so we can choose whether or not they are contributing to the kind of world we want to live in.
You can start by answering these questions in a journal (or with a friend!):
What are some of the expectations you feel in your home life?
How do you feel expected to behave in public? At church? With your parents?
What are some social norms you feel expected to fulfill but overwhelm you?
What are some social norms that are particular to your subculture, religion, or specific context?
What social norms from other cultures make you uncomfortable? What’s the closest comparison in your own culture?