sigelphoenix

A belated entry for Blog Against Sexism Day:

There's a double movement we have to make when dealing with sexism. On the one hand, we have to raise awareness of the fact that sexism is a nasty, widespread, and powerful phenomenon - otherwise what's the point of dedicating so much of our energy to combating it? Yet on the other hand, making sexism out to be something so huge and monstrous can prevent us from actually recognizing it when it occurs - after all, most of the things we see and people we talk to aren't monstrous, so how is that sexism?

To put forth a specific example: recently I was accepted to volunteer as a peer educator with CORE (Committee Organizing Rape Education) on campus. In my training manual are articles on rape culture, and the first one deals with date rape and the ways in which dating rituals set the stage for rape. As the article explains, a lot of men who commit date rape don't even realize that it's rape - and neither do many of the women who are or know date rape victims. Despite the fact that the woman says "no" or even struggles, it doesn't seem to register. "Rape" is a violent crime committed by disgusting men who have no regard for women ... So, these men think, how could what I did be rape?

This is one of the unintended consequences of educating people on the horrific nature of rape. Rape becomes something "other," something too evil and terrible for me to commit, or to happen to me. That's why people feel skeptical when a rape victim doesn't have evidence of violence on her body, or wasn't jumped on by a stranger in the night, or when the accused rapist isn't a ravening ogre. Rape is supposed to be a nasty, violent act that gets retold in gory details on the evening news. Rape committed through coercion or incapacitation, or by someone the victim knows, or by a "nice guy" ... None of these fit with the specter of rape that we're accustomed to.

The risk in fixing the problem, of course - in showing that even normal men can rape - is that rape then becomes "normal." If date rape, as the article I read asserts, is fed by "normal" aspects of typical male-female dating practices, then the protest inevitably follows that it's not rape at all. It's "normal." Everybody does it.

The same principle applies to sexism in general. We try so hard to show how hurtful and damaging sexism is that we end up making it into something "other" in the same way we do with rape. The result is something like: "I'm/he's not sexist, I'm/he's such a nice guy!" Accusations of sexism come as absolute moral condemnations of a person's character - of course people want to avoid having that label on themselves or the people they care about.

And yet, if we show that yes, everyone can say or do sexist things, or have sexist ideas, then people want to explain it away as something normal or even natural. (You know, like gender roles ... even though most people disagree with part or all of the characteristics ascribed to the biological sex assigned to them at birth.) People can dismiss complaints: "It's just a joke," or "Everyone says things like that." Or they can shift the blame: "I'm not the one who came up with that idea, I'm just saying what someone else said." And, of course, they can turn the tables by accusing you of having the problem: "You're the one making such a big deal about it."

In practice, what feminists end up doing is a little bit of both. We demystify sexism and drive it home by showing how typical practices in relationships, family, work, and sex exhibit sexist ideas and assumptions. We say that yes, you are sexist, too. Even if you're a "nice guy," or if you're no different that any of your peer group.

But we also show that it doesn't end there: everyday words and actions maintain the uneven balance of power between the sexes, which in turn feeds the system of patriarchy that causes so much damage to women (and also men) physically, emotionally, economically, politically. If people want to know where the monster of sexism ran off to, there it is: the conglomeration of all the daily and accepted misogyny that we pretend to overlook or try not to care about. The horrifying and shocking expressions of sexism that we see in news stories - domestic abuse of women, the stifling of female voices in government, shameless sexual harassment in the workplace - don't spring up fully-formed in the minds of "those" crazy sexist men. They are created by us and fed by us, a little bit every day.