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Category:
Action/Thriller
Publisher: Magenta
ISBN-10: 1926891368
Type: Non-Fiction
Pages: 235
Copyright: April 15, 2014
ISBN-13: 9781926891361
Price: $4.99 (eBook)
The title says it all.
The title says it all. 100 pieces say it in more detail. Expose and analysis of every day sexism.
Excerpt
Introduction
I came of age in the 70s when second-wave feminism was strong. By the early 80s, people were endorsing non-sexist language, revamping the white, male canon, and identifying, and cracking, the glass ceiling. Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale became a bestseller. Abortion became an issue. Women’s shelters came into existence.
I happened to move to a backwoods area in the late 80s, and through the 90s, I attributed the sexism that I saw to regionalism – where I was, I thought, was just a bit behind the times (colleagues actually denied that the Montreal Massacre was misogynistic femicide). Also, because I was poor, and this was pre-internet, I lost touch with the rest of the world (I'd cancelled my subscriptions to feminist magazines, I'd stopped watching the news because it was so genuinely uninformative, partly because I could get only two local stations, etc.).
So I was surprised – bewildered and appalled, actually – when I saw in the 00s that all the ground we had gained, and then some, had been lost. 2014 feels very much like what I imagine 1950 to have felt like. (Worse, actually. I don’t think crayons came in gendered boxes in the 1950s – though colours were gendered, of course, so maybe this latest development should be praised for ‘outing’ that sad state of affairs. Even so, ‘tomboys’ in the 1950s weren’t pressured to think of themselves as transsexuals and undergo surgical ‘transition’.)
What the hell happened? I'm still trying to understand it: is it just the cyclical generational phenomenon (each generation reacting against the former one), or is it that the easy access to pornography, courtesy of the internet, has conditioned men to be even more misogynistic (apparently they're watching it as early as eleven years of age, and contemporary pornography humiliates and degrades women far more than the centrefolds of Playboy ever did in its heyday), or is it that the 70s was just a fad and the boomers now in power never really were feminist, never really were against sexism…
I think a lot of people believe we're now in a post-feminist (non-sexist) world, perhaps because of all the public changes (International Women's Day, Title IX, sexual harassment programs in the workplace, and so on), but we are so not there yet. Sexism has just gone underground, and because it's not as overt, it's harder to see. But sexist shit happens every day.
Sexist Shit that Pisses Me Off is an idiosyncratic collection: it includes only the stuff I've happened to think about, and what I happen to think about is typically dependent on what I happen to do or what happens to have been done to me. And I lead an rather ordinary, uneventful life. And yet – there are over a hundred angry pieces here.
If the collection were comprehensive, thoroughly representative of the most damaging and most prevalent and most important instances of sexism, there would be more in it about pornography (what is implied by the fact that so many men enjoy watching women being humiliated and degraded?) (for that matter, what is implied by the fact that so many of them enjoy watching other men get hurt and killed?), the sex 'trade' (what is implied by the fact that men buy and sell girls for their sexual use?), sexism in the workplace (I hate that men, on average, work less hard in school and obtain lower grades, and yet receive better job offers and higher pay), sexism in the schools (I hate the way men, on average, take up more conversational space, speaking slowly, repeating themselves, and making irrelevant comments that derail the discussion; I hate the way they automatically assume they know more than me – even when they’re students in a class I’m teaching), sexism in the home, sexism in the rest of the world, the damage of sexism to men, and so on.
Fortunately, others are writing about all of that stuff, and finding it is just an internet search away. There are many excellent feminist, anti-sexism, anti-gender bloggers out there with reading lists. Find them. Read the recommended books. Then maybe you’ll start seeing all the sexist shit in your life – prerequisite to doing something about it.
***
I considered calling this book Every Man Should Read This. A presumptuous title to be sure, but I didn’t think men would pick up, or click on, a book titled simply Everyday Sexism. (And at that point, I was hoping to interest one of the bigger publishers and thought they’d shy away from the title Sexist Shit that Pisses Me Off.)
But men should know that sexist shit happens. Every day. Every day women are ‘put in their place’ by it. Men are put in their place by it as well, but that place is almost always ‘over’ women.
And why do you, men, need to know? Because, assuming you agree that women should not be subordinated, that women are as intelligent, as capable, as worthy as men, it’s almost impossible to get rid of sexism without you.
Partly, because a lot of the time you’re the ones doing the sexist shit. And only you can change your own behaviour. And to those of you who are saying “Yeah, but not all men, not me” – okay, maybe (but I doubt it) (I still do sexist shit, and I’ve spent much of my life consciously thinking about this stuff – we’re brainwashed from birth to pink and blue, so it’s extremely difficult not to do it), but odds are you know someone who is sexist, who does consider and treat women not as peers: call him on it.
And partly, because you’re the ones in power. You’re filling parliaments, you’re sitting in boardrooms, you’re occupying management positions.
That said, every woman should read this too. We need to stop enabling. We need to understand what we’re doing (for example, dressing to be sexually attractive as a matter of routine, rather than just when we really want to be), and what we’re saying (for example, “Oh well, boys will be boys”), and what we’re expecting (for example, that men know everything) – and we need to stop it. Perhaps most importantly, we need to reject the ‘boys will be boys’ mentality; boys, as well as girls, should grow up. We need to stop raising our sons to be sexist. And if their sexist behaviour is due to nature and not nurture, then we should raise them to compensate for their nature; consider it affirmative action.
So although it may seem like I’m criticizing men, I’m really criticizing what our social conditioning has turned them into. So yes, actually, I am criticizing men; I wish male human beings would just be people. I’m criticizing women too. I’m criticizing anyone who accepts the gender conditioning, who accepts the sexism, who agrees to become men and women (that is, human beings identified primarily by their sex) instead of people (human beings identified by their genuine interests, desires, values …).
Why? What’s wrong with gender? It’s a social construct that emphasizes and exaggerates, often to the point of grotesque distortion, differences between the sexes. For no good reason. Real or imagined differences, minor differences, differences that may or may not be innate (in many cases we have no way of knowing, no way of separating natural tendencies from socially imposed tendencies, because the conditioning begins at birth and continues, relentlessly, throughout our lives; only a few manage to resist, partly because to do so comes at a high cost, from ‘mere’ ostracization to physical assault resulting in death) – in a gendered society, males must be masculine and females must be feminine. Gender thus limits our choices, our way of being, our way of living.
It also, by making sex so very prominent, enables a hierarchy based on sex; it enables the patriarchy we live in.
And, of course, again, by making sex so very prominent, it enables, it almost encourages, sexism.
If we get rid of gender – the rigidly oppositional bundles of attributes, behaviours, mannerisms, preferences, interests, desires, and values that we’ve labelled 'masculine' and 'feminine' – we’ll go a long way toward getting rid of sexism, which is, essentially, unjustified differentiation on the basis of sex.
Unjustified because, simply put, one’s sex is almost always irrelevant.
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