1. Men not being sexist shouldn't be contingent upon women not being misogynist. They should stop being misogynist just because it's the right thing to do.
2. Men and women are misogynist for different reasons: men to marginalize women, and women to ingratiate themselves with the men trying to marginalize them. Neither one is justifiable, but one is oppressive and the other is a (bad) strategy to deal with that oppression.
3. One thus sees that if the men who are misogynists weren't, the women who are misogynists wouldn't have any reason to be. Ergo, exhorting women to stop being misogynists so that men will stop gets it precisely backwards.
That doesn't mean we shouldn't encourage women not to be self-loathing misogynists. It only means that we probably shouldn't treat them as somehow more responsible for sexism than sexist men. They really and truly aren't our worst enemy—if our worst enemy disappeared tomorrow, we'd never have a problem with sexist women again.
Monday, August 25, 2008
Backwards
Noting a female reporter referring to the many women-centered forums at the Democratic Convention as an "estrogen-fest," Melissa McEwan makes some great points:
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"That doesn't mean we shouldn't encourage women not to be self-loathing misogynists. It only means that we probably shouldn't treat them as somehow more responsible for sexism than sexist men. They really and truly aren't our worst enemy—if our worst enemy disappeared tomorrow, we'd never have a problem with sexist women again."
ReplyDeleteBullshit. Sure, some women are anti-woman to ingratiate themselves to men with power. But regardless of how painful it is to behold, some women are simply idiots who believe their entire gender to be inferior. And some women are sexist because they're insane, such as Ann Coulter. Some women believe they should adhere to "traditional" roles, but only because they haven't thought it through.
I don't know whether that last group is stupid or insane, but I guarantee you that all these women would still be anti-women if all men were to suddenly disappear.
Also, the first sentence of her last quoted paragraph--above--features a freaking triple negative. How am I to take such convoluted thinking seriously?
If I may take the least significant of your points...
ReplyDeleteAlso, the first sentence of her last quoted paragraph--above--features a freaking triple negative. How am I to take such convoluted thinking seriously?
Actually, the structure is more of a forking double-negative. Not-not-A and its relationship with Not-not-B.
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I suppose that I never intended to get into a "who's responsible most" argument - I do agree with you that there are a number of reasons for a woman to be sexist, but I think that Melissa's general dynamics in point #2 to be valid.