Bad Words

I was talking to this guy the other day about statistics and surveys and how generally crap they all are because everyone lies on surveys. The interesting part is in figuring out which lie seems to be the most statistically fashionable this month and trying to figure out why. If you listen to surveys, something like 90% of North Americans are millionaires (how that works with the 20% below the poverty line I don’t know). If you listen to surveys, nobody in North America is racist, though a good 50% of us have encountered or experienced racism. If you listen to surveys, nobody is sexist, though something like 2/3rds of North American women have experienced sexual discrimination or assault. Men too, though I suppose it’s less obvious.

There are few terms in our culture today that are more stigmatitised as racism or sexism. Especially racism, nobody ever ever wants to be called a racist. In practise, however, most people I’ve spoken to of whatever race or creed will agree that everyone can be racist at times, that society indirectly and directly creates a racist atmosphere that we live in, and many agree that it is only by acknowledging and identifying our own often innate racism that we are able to move beyond it and escape its subconscious tyranny over our minds and relationships. Inga Muscio’s book, Autobiography of a Blue Eyed Devil, is a fascinating exploration of how our collective denial of our racism works to intensify and increase racism’s insidious influence on our culture.

Now the part that I think will get some knickers in a twist (funny how this fish-belly white chick (me) can blather on pseudo-intellectually about racism and not worry about the backlash, but write about sexism and I know I’m due for slings and arrows from all directions). Sexism. A lot of my friends are guys. I’m one of ‘those’ girls, I guess; I have female friends as well, but ever since I was very small I’ve spent a relatively significant amount of time hanging out with the boys. Obviously, my guy friends are pretty awesome people. They’re smart, funny, laid back, articulate, and extremely interesting. Many of them are also sexist.

Oh, so am I, by the way, I’m really not trying to excuse anyone, especially not myself. There are plenty of stereotypes about men and women that I internalise and perpetuate, and while I try to be vigilant they still slip through. Check that bit in the above paragraph where I say that ‘A lot of my friends are guys.’ You didn’t see the multiple rewrites of that sentence where I made comments about how this was because of some kind of flaw in women, that makes it hard to be friends with them. You didn’t see them, but they were there, and they were there because I thought them. It’s complete bullshit, of course, my relative paucity of close female friends has everything to do with me, and virtually nothing to do with the rest of my sex. If there is a flaw, it is in me, for my faliure to connect more deeply and meaningfully with my fellow double X-ers. And I’m making tonnes of assumptions about men that are sweeping, gross generalisations. So I’m a sexist pig too, just like everyone else, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

But what I really wanted to talk about here is the sensitivity, it’s like an open wound that causes an animal to snap at you if you prod it. Nobody, and especially no man ever wants to be labled as sexist. It’s understandable, sexism is sucky, and we’ve certainly been fighting for an awfully long time to eradicate it from our culture. But there’s this impression that we’ve not just won a few key battles, but actually won the war, the evil sexism and racism have been vanquished and sent back to huddle in their corner, or some poor benighted developing nation that is just not as advanced and enlightened as we are. This, I’m afraid, is bullshit. They’re still here, and we’re still doing things to perpetuate them - we just keep it behind the scenes so we can keep on publicly patting ourselves on the back for a job well done.

So guys. I’ve got a news flash. Every time you positively or negatively discuss the ability of a woman in the public eye to do whatever it is that she’s doing in terms of how old or fat or attractive she is, that’s sexist. Every time you discuss a subject that is not traditionally in the purview of womankind and dismiss the idea of asking a woman what she might think about it, that’s sexist. Every time you try to figure out how to save the world without taking the opinions of 50+% of the population into account or asking them what they think, that’s sexist. Every time that you assume that your girlfriend’s affection is somehow dependent on material goods, that’s sexist. Every time you refuse to learn how to correctly perform a basic survival task on the grounds that your mother always did that, and your father never did, that’s sexist. Every time you treat a woman aggressively because you want her to fulfill your sexual needs and she’s not into it, that’s sexist.

In the interests of being fair, (and not being sexist), I should really now devote equal space to deconstructing the rampant sexism which is so prevalent amongst the ‘fairer’ sex. And don’t get me wrong, it’s totally there, and I’m as guilty of it as the next girl. But this is already a ridiculously long post, and I think I’ve probably pissed off enough people already today. And I do fully expect that my saying this will probably make a lot of people angry with me, and I’m sorry about that. Please understand, that it doesn’t mean I think you’re a bad person, and it doesn’t mean that I’m holding myself up as some kind of paragon in this matter, as I’m most definitely not. But I am trying to call it like I see it, because I think we as a society have a lot of progress to make in terms of human rights and equality, and we’ve stayed spinning our wheels in one place whilst assuring ourselves and each other that we’ve already gotten to where we need to go for far too long.