Examples of Everyday Sexism

[denny]

libellum and I have a fair few conversations where she's trying to talk to me about a general problem, and I start arguing with her by asking for and/or knocking down specific instances of the problem. There's some scope for claiming this is 'a boy thing' or 'a geek thing', but whatever - I'm not about to claim it's unchangeable. So, I keep trying to do it less, and take her points on board instead of quibbling over details. It's an ongoing process.

Sexism is an area we end up discussing quite often, her being increasingly interested in analysing her feminism and me being basically well-intentioned but actually a bit crap in practise, it seems.

Today she posted a really interesting post, possibly the first in a series. It simply lists some things that have happened to her recently, most of them frequently, which are casual everyday examples of sexism (or other gender-specific unpleasantness). Her objective isn't to convert raging sexists into nice people... it's to help people like me realise just how pervasive this stuff is. Despite my best intentions, my instinctive response every time I hear about something like this is probably mostly based on "but I never see/hear this stuff happen". Well, I wouldn't, would I?

Anyway, if you're interested in being reminded every now and then of how the world seems to behave less than ideally towards females on a regular basis, you might want to track this tag:
http://libellum.livejournal.com/tag/sexism:+every+little+counts

Out of curiousity, if she (or someone else) were to start a community where women could post this kind of thing and men could read it:
[Poll #1188074]

Feel free to explain/elaborate in comments. Apologies to any snowflakes, I wanted to keep the options very simple - if they bother you that much, don't vote, and leave a comment.

Comments

[wildeabandon.livejournal.com]

s/I'm a woman/I'm female bodied and usually read as a woman

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

Yes, I thought that line of additional options might feature in my snowflake collection.

*kiss*

[libellum.livejournal.com]

I love you :)

Just posting to register my mild concern about the wording of the poll. I'm not certain that "yes" answers to the first question would be indicative of the number of men prepared to engage in such a dialogue sensitively and responsibly, and am slightly anxious about generating false statistics. I realise all this would be handled at the putative community-creation stage, - just wanted to register my concern.

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

I think I was mostly envisaging it as being read-only. I think allowing men to comment would probably require a lot more moderator time/energy, particularly at first.

[libellum.livejournal.com]

For some reason I'd assume that it would be silly to let men read and not comment, but actually, I can see your point. And at the risk of sounding sexist, I think it would be very helpful for women to feel like men were unreservedly giving them a forum to talk in where they wouldn't be shouted down. This idea is growing on me...

I guess if a male reader wanted to respond they'd have to post to their personal journal, if the community wasn't flocked. And no member of the community who didn't want to engage with them on that basis would have to.

[hythloday.livejournal.com]

Merely to register a preference, I would be most comfortable reading every_little_counts and posting to every_little_counts_discussion.

[adjectivegail]

I also think it would be an interesting experience for guys to encounter a space where they're allowed to see all the conversations going on but aren't allowed to contribute because it's too difficult for their pretty little heads.

... except we know it's wrong when that happens to women and do two wrongs make a right?

Then there's also the fact that the only guys who're likely to stick around in a place like that, are guys who are probably aware of their privilege to start with...

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

I'm theoretically aware of the concept of male privilege, and I can intellectually believe in it when I stop to think about it, but my emotional reaction is almost invariably to disbelieve it when it's given as the reason for something. I'm hoping exposure to a potentially somewhat relentless stream of simple factual examples might help to break down that "if I don't see it it doesn't exist" theory.

[oedipamaas49.livejournal.com]

"slightly anxious about generating false statistics"

...which I think we will. I voted 'would read', but honestly it all comes down to the contents of what gets posted. I'd certainly look in, and if every post was the quality of your last one I'd read it all. But LJ communities rarely work out that smoothly, and I'd likely end up unsubscribing once the quality dropped or the quantity of posts got too much for me.

[cokephreak.livejournal.com]

I'm generally happy to read comments along these lines, but this does very much come down to the style of the posts / comments.

I generally take offence at "all men ... " comments, regardless of what follows. The same applies to "all women ... ". The most offensive one of these that I've encountered a surprising(ly high) number of times is the line "all men are rapists". Really, this is not the way to win my heart or mind.

Other issues I have with feminism tend to be related to the more sexist feminist principles, such as "end violence against women". This is largely why I don't considermyself a feminist - there are way too many issues / arguements that are considered feminist that I strongely disagree with.

Libellums post was fine, I found nothing in there that I'd take offence at. The same cannto be said for some of the comments.

An additonal idea for the community, or for a seperate community : Discussion of the benifits & positive bias's that are afforded to women. This fits with Libellums forst comments about "checking privilige", and suits my own ethic of being aware and ajusting your own behaviour before complaining and telling some-one else to ajust theirs.

[wildeabandon.livejournal.com]

An additonal idea for the community, or for a seperate community : Discussion of the benifits & positive bias's that are afforded to women.
No one is stopping you from setting up such a community.

[wildeabandon.livejournal.com]

Another thought - there's a difference between the very big discussion of how gender privilege works, and the specific aims of cataloguing some of the specific examples that we experience, which I think is what libellum is trying to do here. I've set up a post for men to do the latter in my journal.

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

*nod* it was the focus and the lack of analysis that I thought made that post, and the community idea. It attacks the problem from that 'male' angle that I mentioned at the beginning of my post - specific examples, rather than theoretical discussion of the larger issues.

It's my (possibly entirely wrong) feeling that it'd be easier to get men (including myself) onboard with the broader discussions if they were convinced of the extent of the problem first.

I realise that the lack of being convinced so far is probably exasperating, but I still think it's worth addressing if you (collectively - women who would like basically sound men to understand better/care more/whatever) can muster the patience :)

[wildeabandon.livejournal.com]

I realise that the lack of being convinced so far is probably exasperating, but I still think it's worth addressing if you (collectively - women who would like basically sound men to understand better/care more/whatever) can muster the patience :)

It is good that you are prepared to try and learn and understand and care more, and I will continue trying to address it, but one of the things I'd like you to try and understand is that it's exhausting. It's not just a case of mustering patience, it's accepting that for the small steps that I think have been made over the last couple of days in terms of people realising that this stuff happens and that sometimes their ways of reacting to it is unhelpful I've had to spend an awfully long time being dismissed and invalidated and in some cases downright insulted, whilst all the time trying very carefully to make the effort to stay calm and frame my arguments in terms that make sense to people for whom they're distant and theoretical rather than personal and sometimes painful as they are for me.

So yes, I'll keep doing it, as I'm sure will others, because it's important to me that the men I' love to can understand where I'm coming from, but I hope you can stay aware that it isn't fun, and it isn't easy.

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

I regularly campaign against governmental invasions of privacy - I'm aware that banging your head against a brick wall does get a bit tiring after a while :) From time to time I give up, regather my energies, and then sooner or later I get over-excited and try it again.

I don't expect anyone to continuously pour effort into this (or any other cause), which is another reason why I like the community idea - a continuous effect may be possible by collecting intermittent individual efforts. In the meantime, any efforts you (and Helen) do pour in is much appreciated.

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

If nobody was willing to take a criticism onboard unless the person making it was flawless, I don't think we'd get very far. :)

What I liked about libellum's post / the community idea was the simple matter-of-fact nature of it. No great analysis of the underlying societal motivations etc etc, just straight-forward examples of people being crappy to women in ways that they aren't crappy to men. I don't know if I'm abnormal in this respect, but I find it hard to believe that kind of thing happens regularly for some reason, which is sometimes intensely frustrating to females of my acquaintance - having one girl after another post saying '[blah] happened to me today' would hopefully get convincing after a while.

I think broadening the remit of the community would instantly break exactly what I thought was its most valuable asset - the very narrow 'just the facts' focus. I hoped people might read that where they wouldn't read a more general and more discursive/argumentative community.

[easternpromise.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I think I'd read, but probably not post. A lot of the things that libellum mentions have either never happened to me, or have just never clicked in my mind as 'sexism'. I had one incident a few years ago that really was, to the point that I felt as though I had been physically assaulted, and I've made an artform out of being mostly unnoticeable in public since, so I don't tend to get this kind of attention. Even if I did, I don't think my brain would click and make the connection that that's what it was.

If any of that makes sense? Too early in the morning for me. :)

[alixandrea.livejournal.com]

'I would post in such a community' = I might post in such a community. I might just lurk instead, I'm good at lurking... ;-)

[sevenhelz.livejournal.com]

same.

some days i find myself noticing every eye i catch, other days a bomb could drop and i'd be too busy thinking about my euphonium/lunch to notice. i wouldn't necessarily have anything to post, or want to...

[meihua.livejournal.com]

I would read but not post in such a community.