Mr. Nice Guy Redux

Earlier this year, I was invited to facilitate the discussion of a newly released documentary, as part of a church-sponsored film series about Palestine and Israel. The people who had approached me with the request were offering me $50 for my participation. I declined, explaining that the film was not BDS-compliant, and that therefore I would not validate it by facilitating the discussion following its online screening. Much to my disappointment, they went ahead and showed the film anyway, with another discussant. They also added me to their mailing list, so I could watch all the documentaries, and participate in the discussions, if I felt so inclined. 

As I looked at the names of the discussants, I noticed all were women. I am assuming, even though I did not ask, that each was paid $50 for their time. Some may have accepted it, others may have declined the money, saying they are happy to facilitate the discussion for free, as their gift to the cause of justice for Palestine and its people.

As I was still upset over the fact that the film series organizers did not pull that movie out, even though they supposedly endorse BDS, I received a message from a Palestinian lawyer I hold in the highest respect, a highly-qualified, eloquent, frequent speaker at events nationally and globally (since the pandemic, as it moved all events online, also significantly reduced otherwise prohibitive geographic distances), who told me “You should update your Mr. Nice Guy article.” In that 2016 article, I had denounced the fact that while women routinely speak for free, or simply ask for our travel expenses to be covered, many men ask for, and are offered, generous amounts of money to basically speak about how they are “not the bad guy.” As I wrote then: “The discrepancy in honoraria is most obvious when activists for justice in Palestine celebrate decent Jews for exactly that – being decent. ‘Nice’ Israeli men are in a class apart, placed on a pedestal, considered heroes for not being violent, racist murderers. In other words, the mere fact that they are decent earns them special status.”  

My friend explained that, since the pandemic, she had given a great many talks, and had recently learned that “the Nice Guys have been charging thousands for their talks.” The women “are never offered any money,” while the “men always demand it and our organizations oblige,” she told me.  Then she gave me additional details: she had been asked to speak at a conference, for which she was not offered any compensation, and she agreed, only to be told the event needed to be postponed because the organizers still needed to raise the $1000 they were offering the “Nice Guy” who was her co-panelist. 

I was taken aback. I do not expect any one article to alone make a world of difference, but I do know this particular one had opened up many conversations, and had been assigned as “required reading” for their members by many activist groups.  I also know that many chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine across the nation had read and discussed it. And I recall that, when I first published it, I had received numerous emails where a reader was guessing at the identity of the “Nice Guy” I had in mind as I wrote that OpEd. The people who were emailing me mentioned quite a few different “Nice Guys” they had dealt with, whom they were sure was the Nice Guy I myself had criticized, without naming him. The fact is, I had not named the Nice Guy who inspired my article because I knew he was not unique, there were, sadly, others like him. But I had no idea how pervasive the problem was, until I received the many emails naming so many different “Nice Guys,” nor how persistent it was, until the recent email from this one Palestinian woman, five years after I had published the article.  

I started this present article with the story of my being asked to facilitate a film discussion, and being offered $50 to do that, and how all the facilitators turned out to be women, because I also recognize a pattern there, of women’s labor, when it is financially compensated at all, being really “cheap,” for lack of a better word. It is “pin money,” defined by Merriam-Webster as “money given by a man to his wife for her own use,” and “a trivial amount of money,” “for the purpose of incidentals.” Pin money does not pay the rent, it does not buy groceries, it buys small luxuries, a “pin” (brooch), a new scarf, a trinket. 

Of course, I am not suggesting, and I am sure my friend was also not suggesting, an absolute statement: “all men get paid thousands, and all women offer their time and labor for free,” or at best for pin money.  But the pattern is certainly there, and seems not to have changed much: when some men (the Nice Guys) agree to give a talk, they do it for money that helps pay their bills, not buy them a new scarf. They are asked to speak because they have proven to be “decent,” as I described in my article from five years ago. Today, these Nice Guys may have abandoned the belief in the feasibility of the two states, some may have even renounced Zionism itself, and rather than offer all they have in order to redress the privileges they never earned, but were simply born into, they charge and garner a generous honorarium for speaking about their change of heart and mind. 

Meanwhile, Palestinian women who have developed their expertise over many years of learning in a hostile environment that penalizes, rather than rewards them for their opinions, are expected to share their knowledge for free. 

It is generally known that “for every dollar a man makes, a woman makes 75 cents.” Or maybe 80. Is that 68? The fact is, gender is only one determining factor in the wage discrepancy between men and women.  As this September 2020 report shows, for every dollar a white, non-Hispanic man makes in the US, a Latina woman makes 55 cents. For that same dollar, an Indigenous woman makes 60 cents, a black woman makes 63 cents, a white woman 79 cents, and an Asian American woman makes 87 cents.   

The race/ethnicity factor, or the religious factor (Jewish, versus Christian or Muslim Palestinian) must also be accounted for in our discussion of the money paid “Nice Guys.” They are generally white Jews, the beneficiaries of layers of privileges, whereas the Palestinian women are, well, Palestinian women. And so, when they are speaking on the very same panel, a “Nice Guy” gets a $1000 honorarium, a Palestinian woman gets $0. As one Palestinian woman shared with me, when she inquired about that exact discrepancy, $1000 for the “Nice Guy,” zero for her, she was told it’s “because this is not his issue, but it’s yours.” 

Shedding the relics of privilege is one of the hardest things to accomplish, as evidenced by all the research into white fragility. So I do not expect the Nice Guys to fully redress their ways, even if they are finally grasping facets of something we, Palestinian women, have known all our lives: Zionism is settler colonialism, which always manifests in violent and gendered ways against the indigenous people. So, just as I did not end my earlier article with a call on the Nice Guys to change, but rather, by asking the groups who invite speakers to take stock of how they are enabling this injustice, I conclude this article too with the same request: think of how you are contributing to the ongoing dispossession of Palestinians, by demanding their expertise for free, as you pay Nice Guys handsome amounts of money, for being “decent.”  

But then again, are they? Decent?