1/12/00

Fair warning: This is a rant. It is all about how I feel and is bluntly, even brutally honest. It is angry and unapologetic. If you are a man, you may be offended. Tough shit. If you don't want to be offended, don't read it.

A friend emailed me a copy of this article and asked for responses. The rant that follows is my reaction to the article, though it doesn't specifically address most of what's in the article.

Although (or perhaps because) racism is, in many ways, a more visible form of discrimination in our society, sexism is potentially more dangerous. In both cases, in the US, people don't like to look at the problem, admit that it exists, or talk about it. The same goes for economic and other forms of discrimination. We have an image of ourselves and/or our nation as being the highest form of society yet found: thus, how could there possibly be anything wrong with it!? It's unpatriotic even to think such a thing.

*barf*

I'll just take a moment to point out that women have only had the vote for 80 years.

Sexism is the most entrenched form of discrimination; it can be found in nearly all societies on the globe (I can't think of a counter-example), and is certainly the norm in the "major" societies of our history. We have male leaders, both currently and historically. When he have a female leader, much is made of her: can she do as good a job as a man? is she too manly? shouldn't she be spending more time on her family? I actually heard a woman on the radio the other day (Jane Curtain, of whom I'd expect more) say, with respect to Hillary Clinton's senate run, "There are responsibilities that go along with being the First Lady. If you already have one job that you're not doing, don't run out and try to get another one." Being the president's wife is, apparently, more important than running for senate.

We'll know we have a society free of gender bias when we stop needing to make such a big deal about successful women in all realms, from politics (Margaret Thatcher, Hillary Rodham-Clinton) to athletics (the US Women's World Cup team) to business (Martha Stewart, Carly Fiorina) to action stars to regular old women you pass on the street.

I've read that women do better in all women's schools, and men do better at co-ed schools. I find that very interesting, if discouraging. Why? Because women are empowered to be full participants in an environment where if they're -not- full participants, no one is. Why should men do better in a co-ed environment? Well, I certainly don't know, but what would they have to gain being in an all male setup? I mean, hey, if they're automatically the "top half" of a co-ed campus, that can't be too bad for their self-esteem and inclination to learn, can it? There have certainly been enough studies to show that expectations impact outcome in learning.

In high school, I had a teacher who, when he was teaching in Asia, bought his wife for 2 cows. He was an excellent teacher (of science) but a first class chauvenist. I hated him. I clearly remember getting a test back and him announcing, "The girls' average on this exam was higher than the boys'. What's happening, guys?" It didn't occur to me until years later that I may not have done well in that class partially because of that attitude. Other women have succeeded in his courses, despite that attitude, and he has been supportive of good students regardless of gender, but he was more readily supportive of men, and I wonder what the girls, even those who did well in his classes, might have internalized.

I know that men are threatened by feminism. Their self-image is largely based on the foundation of superiority. I'm sympathetic, but sometimes, when I talk to a defensive man who says, "But I've never done anything!" I want to smack him silly. Tough shit if you're feeling defensive. Oh, poor little man, being attacked for getting the long end of the stick. Yeah, it's a tough life.

I'm trying to work myself up to the point where I can catcall and whistle at men the same way they do to me. Unfortunately, when a woman does that kind of thing, it's a compliment, not an imposition of power. The guy would probably end up asking me out.

Regardless of whether a man "does anything" overtly sexist (which, frankly, in all likelihood, he has done and will do again) we are all constantly bombarded by social images and expectations that are completely embedded with gender biased messages. The fact, for example, that the author of the article had the experience of a male professor labelling her a "feminist and agitator" for asking him to refer occasionally to a generic reader as "she", just goes to show that people, especially but not exclusively men, get touchy about the possibility of change.

One can't be a feminist without being an agitator. Apparently, people have an image of feminists as all being loud, angry lesbians. Frankly, I like loud, angry lesbians. I might like to be one, actually. I'm not, though, and have had people respond with surprise when I tell them I consider myself a feminist, possibly even a radical one. "But you're so quiet about it," they might say. Or, "But you don't make me feel like I'm a bad woman for not wanting to have a career." Are all feminists supposed to think that we should do away with men and family? The "feminism" that says that all women need to have a family but prioritize their careers is just as much a trap as the patriarchy that says women need to prioritize their families or else they're not "real women". Or something.

Men and women are both trapped within the context of social expectations, but there's no question that women get the short end of the stick. We have to pass muster image-wise before our opinions are considered. We are expected to be the ones who balance work and family. When we succeed too well in a man's world, we're denigrated for being "too masculine", "bitchy", "cold", "hard", "ball-breaker" or any number of other names. Men suffer, too. If a man is in a loving relationship in which he gives his partner power, he might be considered "pussy whipped". I might like to whip someone with my pussy, but it wouldn't be a loved one.

While less common in my experience these days, I remember having discussions with friends in grade school and high school on the question of whether women and men are equal. The fact that this is a valid question within the context of our society disgusts me.

People pay a lot of lip service to equality, but it doesn't surprise me at all to know that actions speak louder than words -- in the case of academia, or in the case of day-to-day life. We may talk about how horrible it is that women suffer die daily at the hands of men, both familiar (domestic violence, acquaintance rape) and strange (abduction, rape, murder), but as a society, our actions accept these facts. How horrible is it that women in some Muslim countries can be legally killed by their husbands or male relatives for any number of improprieties? Well, the same number of women, per capita, are killed in the US in incidents of domestic violence, and the system has yet to figure out how to fix it. I happen to think that this little detail is inherent in the working of the system. In some states, the very nature of acquaintance rape is considered different from rapes at the hands of a stranger: the potential consequences for a man convicted of acquaintance rape are less than those for a man convicted of raping a stranger. Because surely she must have done something to deserve it. She must have asked for it. She must be at fault, at least to a degree.

"Boys will be boys," excuses all kinds of antisocial behavior, directed at both women and men. Our social system victimizes women as the "weaker sex", and it victimizes men in the same stroke. Unfortunately, men don't get a lot of my sympathy here.

Am I surprised to learn that women do better in schools where more of the faculty are women? Not at all. I'd do better in a world where more of the leaders, period, were women. What a system.