Casual Sexism

This isn't specifically a post about motherhood.  But if we want mothers to be trusted, respected and taken seriously, we need women to be trusted, respected and taken seriously.  And something that eats away at that respect every day is best referred to as casual sexism.  It's not overt, woman-hating, rape-apologizing, pay-discriminating, health care-denying sexism that most reasonable people recognize and dislike.  It's much more insidious, and it plants the seeds for all of the other stuff.  The problem with casual sexism is that it's used, usually unknowingly, by people who say they support women's equal rights.

Some examples:

TV shows that depict all (or most) female characters as irrational babies.
Any TV show with a "dumb blonde" character.
Jokes where the punchline is some variation on "women are confusing"
Jokes where the punchline is some variation on "women are crazy"
Jokes where the punchline is some variation on "women are inferior to [insert male-appreciated thing here: beer, cars, football]"
TV commercials that sell things by saying some variation of "only for men - too tough for women"

AND crucially:

The dismissive response you get when you point out the underlying sexism in any one of these things.

Casual sexism comes from a quiet underlying assumption that women are irrational, infantile, weak, untrustworthy and unreasonable.  If this assumption sits underneath all of our cultural references, it becomes easy and natural to make jokes about how incomprehensible "women" are and not even notice that you've insulted your friends, family and audience.  If this is underlying our jokes, what we're saying is that women are all the same.  This one thought alone is poisonous.

When women are automatically and unquestioningly assumed to be universally inferior and irrational, not only do they not deserve respect or trust, but it's also a lot easier to treat them with violence.  This is not a minor point.  Casual sexism seems unimportant, but it sets the stage for discrimination and violence.

So many times, I have questioned the underlying assumptions about women in jokes or TV shows or movies and been told that I'm finding problems where there are none.  That I'm overreacting.  Sometimes I tell myself that.

But I think a good smell test is to ask yourself: Does this joke/tv show/commercial rely on an assumption about women's weakness or inferiority?  If it does, and it's not questioned, it lays the basis for all the "real" overt sexism and misogyny that most people do tend to recognize and oppose.

If we all just agree that women are infantile, and let that be an assumption that we're all working from, sexual discrimination comes easily after that.   The premise of a joke is a commonly-shared understanding.  If that premise is, without any self-awareness or irony, assuming that women are lunatic harpies bent on the destruction of men, it's not "just a joke."  It lays the groundwork for all kinds of really horrible things down the line.

So please, the next time you hear a joke or watch a show that doesn't pass the smell test, call it out.  Call it out in front of your friends, family and most importantly your children, and let them know why it's wrong.  Until we start pointing out that we're working on bad assumptions, all the rest of the bad stuff that's happening to women right now will be a lot harder to stop.

Sweating the small stuff might be the best way to protect ourselves and our daughters from a culture that doesn't trust us to behave like adults.

I don't want to have to tell my daughter that there are people in the world, lots and lots of them, who believe that the little boys in her preschool class deserve the right to someday tell her what to do with her own body.  That those little boys should someday have the right to dominate her, discriminate against her and force her to be pregnant and give birth against her will.

I don't want to tell her those things.  And I won't have to.  Because these insidious little jokes that go by unchallenged and the stupid roles that women (STILL!) play on television and the shallow and infantile female exemplars that we teach our children about are doing that job, quietly and secretly, without me having to say a word.

Let's start fighting this at the source.  Stop the unquestioned acceptance of casual sexism.  Forty years ago, people made casually racist jokes all the time.  Those who questioned those jokes were laughed off as overly sensitive and overly political.  But casually racist jokes, while certainly not gone, are not publicly acceptable anymore, at least not in most national media or in relatively educated circles of progressive people. Unfortunately, I know dozens of educated, progressive men who would publicly make a casually sexist joke ( "women are so confusing!") without hesitation, but would never publicly make a casually racist joke ( "black people are so [fill in blank]!").  The same can be said for many television shows.  There is ample room for progress here.

A final note to the guys who make these jokes.  Some of you make these jokes because you are mad at one particular woman.  Please imagine instead that you were mad at a man of color.  Would you turn to facebook and post a litany of racist jokes?  Less likely.  Because you understand that man of color to be one person who has wronged you, not the embodiment of his entire race.  Please, if you can try just one time, try to consider that women are also individual people.

Women are not all alike.  We do not all think the same way.  We do not all treat you the same way.  We are all real human beings who have the same kind of brain as you do, and we deserve to be treated that way.  Furthermore, we do not owe you anything.  We have bad days and get grumpy.  We sometimes don't feel like talking.  Sometimes we find people unattractive.  We have not betrayed you.  We are just people with opinions that are as valid as yours.

Instead of extrapolating your anger at one woman to all other women, try instead to feel just a little bit of empathy and human understanding.  Imagine feeling frightened for your safety on a regular basis, being ordered by large men you don't know to smile when you're having a terrible day, having perfect strangers comment on your appearance on a daily basis,  hearing your elected officials discussing your genitalia and what you should be allowed to do with it, being told that if you are unfortunate enough to be raped that you will be forced to be pregnant for the better part of a year and then forced to give birth to a child you are frightened of and angry at, and then at the end of a long day seeing the people you love and respect making jokes with your inferiority as the punchline.

It needs to stop.  We need to stop laughing it off.  Call it out when you hear it.  Call it out in front of your children.  Casual sexism is the base upon which all of this other terrible stuff is built.  We need to stop it at the source.  And teach our children to do the same.  If we're lucky, by the time our kids are grown they'll know casual sexism when they hear it and they'll stand up and denounce it, and we can finally stop having to listen to our elected officials needing to clarify that despite their prior statements, they actually believe raping women is bad.