With regard to examples about clothing, one handy one would be:
I’d been generally aware that while the Muslim women’s reactions to me seemed to be more or less constant for a while, it had stood out to me that the men’s reactions were considerably more volatile. At the time I gauged this in terms of body language: the apparent tension of the facial muscles, the set of the shoulders, the extension of the arms, what the hands are doing, gestural or expressive mirroring… I don’t have formal training in this stuff, and being fairly autistic I don’t seem to have the same reactions to it that neurotypical people do, but on some perceptual level it just clicks that this person is relaxed or curious or uncomfortable or very uncomfortable.
Anyway, so I hadn’t really put thought into how I should dress before, in that context. I just wore the clothes I was comfy with the first day I started teaching, and didn’t notice any issues that stood out to me. I kept doing that until summer arrived. My usual fashion sense is fairly covering and drapey (I like cardigans, skirts and “big billowy hippie pants”). At the time I also had a penchant for wearing a head scarf (not a full wrap like the Muslim women in class wore, though—just fancy bandanas), more on that later.
On warmer days, I’d avoid wearing my hoodie or jacket and just do short-sleeve shirts. Some days I’d wear the hoodie but have shorts instead of pants or skirt. I was mostly busy with the teaching so it took a while for the pattern to reach conscious awareness, but gradually it dawned on me that the men displayed more signs of discomfort on these days. It didn’t seem like such a big deal that I was worried, though; it was a noticeable element but didn’t really interfere with the flow of class, and the bulk of the class (non-Muslim men and women plus Muslim women) didn’t seem to care.
Then one day I wore a tank top plus shorts. This was during the height of summer, and it didn’t strike me as particularly unusual. Suddenly the reaction difference was very marked. None of the Muslim students, men or women, felt comfortable looking at me at all. They tensed up in reaction to me getting closer. They entirely avoided asking for help during computer time (which necessitates me getting pretty close since I’d have to peer over their shoulders at the laptop, in a crowded classroom—on a related note, this was a huge test case for how my “gendered socialization” cues were doing, since when the women were comfy with me their body language was VERY clear on that point), and no matter how obviously they were struggling with the material they said they were fine. They wouldn’t actually breach etiquette and tell me to leave them alone with it, but they also clearly weren’t comfortable with me there. They wouldn’t make eye contact, they wouldn’t even look at me directly, and they certainly weren’t okay with me entering their personal space distance. This even applied to the women who’d treated me like a friend, not just a teacher—all the informality was gone.
Through all of this, my non-Muslim students (men and women both) remained more or less consistent about their body language; whether or not they liked me personally seemed a whole lot more relevant to their comfort (always erring on the side of polite in any case). My clothing choices didn’t seem to faze them.
I decided the very next day to compromise. I wore something a bit more covering...and blasted the air conditioner in the room. It took a while to find an equilibrium that really worked for people (differing temperature comfort zones), but negotiating settings on a thermostat was a whole lot easier, than trying to teach a class full of students who were too uncomfortable to focus. After a week, the Muslim women students were acting like it had never happened, the Muslim men were comfy enough to function in class (if a little more politely-distant than they had been) and the non-Muslim men and women remained pretty consistent throughout.
(Mind, once winter came around, we had the opposite problem—all of my students were from hot places, I can’t stand heat, and to preserve social comfort I had to keep them from blasting the heat all day...)
EDIT: Oh right, the headscarf thing. I noticed that it seemed to make a small but positive difference as well, mostly with newly-arrived Muslim women students. It wasn’t a huge effect, but after about eight months I’d elected to wear a scarf every day for the first week or two after we got a new student matching those labels, especially during one-on-one pullouts and interactions between class. It seemed to make affective mirroring go smoother during the get-to-know-you period, although it was a subtle thing, and didn’t seem to make a difference at all with anyone who’d been there for more than a couple months as of when I met them.
With regard to examples about clothing, one handy one would be:
I’d been generally aware that while the Muslim women’s reactions to me seemed to be more or less constant for a while, it had stood out to me that the men’s reactions were considerably more volatile. At the time I gauged this in terms of body language: the apparent tension of the facial muscles, the set of the shoulders, the extension of the arms, what the hands are doing, gestural or expressive mirroring… I don’t have formal training in this stuff, and being fairly autistic I don’t seem to have the same reactions to it that neurotypical people do, but on some perceptual level it just clicks that this person is relaxed or curious or uncomfortable or very uncomfortable.
Anyway, so I hadn’t really put thought into how I should dress before, in that context. I just wore the clothes I was comfy with the first day I started teaching, and didn’t notice any issues that stood out to me. I kept doing that until summer arrived. My usual fashion sense is fairly covering and drapey (I like cardigans, skirts and “big billowy hippie pants”). At the time I also had a penchant for wearing a head scarf (not a full wrap like the Muslim women in class wore, though—just fancy bandanas), more on that later.
On warmer days, I’d avoid wearing my hoodie or jacket and just do short-sleeve shirts. Some days I’d wear the hoodie but have shorts instead of pants or skirt. I was mostly busy with the teaching so it took a while for the pattern to reach conscious awareness, but gradually it dawned on me that the men displayed more signs of discomfort on these days. It didn’t seem like such a big deal that I was worried, though; it was a noticeable element but didn’t really interfere with the flow of class, and the bulk of the class (non-Muslim men and women plus Muslim women) didn’t seem to care.
Then one day I wore a tank top plus shorts. This was during the height of summer, and it didn’t strike me as particularly unusual. Suddenly the reaction difference was very marked. None of the Muslim students, men or women, felt comfortable looking at me at all. They tensed up in reaction to me getting closer. They entirely avoided asking for help during computer time (which necessitates me getting pretty close since I’d have to peer over their shoulders at the laptop, in a crowded classroom—on a related note, this was a huge test case for how my “gendered socialization” cues were doing, since when the women were comfy with me their body language was VERY clear on that point), and no matter how obviously they were struggling with the material they said they were fine. They wouldn’t actually breach etiquette and tell me to leave them alone with it, but they also clearly weren’t comfortable with me there. They wouldn’t make eye contact, they wouldn’t even look at me directly, and they certainly weren’t okay with me entering their personal space distance. This even applied to the women who’d treated me like a friend, not just a teacher—all the informality was gone.
Through all of this, my non-Muslim students (men and women both) remained more or less consistent about their body language; whether or not they liked me personally seemed a whole lot more relevant to their comfort (always erring on the side of polite in any case). My clothing choices didn’t seem to faze them.
I decided the very next day to compromise. I wore something a bit more covering...and blasted the air conditioner in the room. It took a while to find an equilibrium that really worked for people (differing temperature comfort zones), but negotiating settings on a thermostat was a whole lot easier, than trying to teach a class full of students who were too uncomfortable to focus. After a week, the Muslim women students were acting like it had never happened, the Muslim men were comfy enough to function in class (if a little more politely-distant than they had been) and the non-Muslim men and women remained pretty consistent throughout.
(Mind, once winter came around, we had the opposite problem—all of my students were from hot places, I can’t stand heat, and to preserve social comfort I had to keep them from blasting the heat all day...)
EDIT: Oh right, the headscarf thing. I noticed that it seemed to make a small but positive difference as well, mostly with newly-arrived Muslim women students. It wasn’t a huge effect, but after about eight months I’d elected to wear a scarf every day for the first week or two after we got a new student matching those labels, especially during one-on-one pullouts and interactions between class. It seemed to make affective mirroring go smoother during the get-to-know-you period, although it was a subtle thing, and didn’t seem to make a difference at all with anyone who’d been there for more than a couple months as of when I met them.
(Bows.) Thank you for Being Specific!