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Sexism 101: the Benevolent Misogynist

November 4, 2018 by Tess

Women have a strange relationship with compliments, mostly because so many come unsolicited from strange men whenever we venture out in public. But there are other kinds of compliments that are more backhanded than creepy, and the men offering them aren’t the folks you might expect. These guys respect their mothers, love their daughters, and would take a bullet for their sisters, wife, or girlfriend. Oftentimes, these are men we know and with whom we have close relationships. We love them and they love us…but they are also perpetrators of the deepest, most insidious brand of sexism.

These men are products of a society that forever tilts in favor of the masculine. They are raised to respect women while also reinforcing a women’s biological limitations. They are well versed in gender roles, and the sexism they exhibit upholds and validates those societal norms, taught from cradle to grave, to all children, regardless of race or socioeconomic background.

This kind of sexism works like a lullaby. We walk through life hearing this soothing music, and it doesn’t occur to us until much later that there might be a problem with the underlying melody…if it ever occurs to us at all. Many of us simply internalize the music and it provides the persistent soundtrack to all of our life decisions and movements in the world.

The benevolent misogynist, always marching to the beat of this insidious tune, delivers his gentle oppression by way of a complement:

Women are just natural born nurturers.

That seems like a harmless observation, right? Maybe even a good thing? But let’s unpack the statement.

What roles do nurturers play in our society? They typically concern themselves with the raising and teaching of children. They take care of elderly relatives. They nurse folks back to health. Most importantly, they remain in positions devoid of power while others take care of running the world.

Think about it.

What kinds of ‘compliments’ have you heard about women’s perceived skill sets in the past?

Women are better at raising children.

Women are the backbone of the family.

Women are better at managing a household.

There is nothing inherently wrong with these statements. But, beneath the sparkly pink veneer, they perpetuate stereotypes about women and their so-called limitations. They turn a weakness into a seeming strength, creating a gilded cage that doesn’t simply keep women from rising too high in society, but actually keeps them from wanting to escape the cage in the first place. The cage is good, because women are just the kinds of creatures that must be contained and, therefore, thrive in such places.

Women are biologically equipped to birth children, but that doesn’t mean they should be the sole source of childrearing. As a group, women have come a long way in the last 50 years, but society still expects them to be the primary caretaker of home and family. Wanting more is seen as odd — a woman woefully outside of her element.

Men who reinforce these stereotypes are part of the problem, whether they intended to hold women back or not. Misogyny is systemic, y’all, which means it underpins every institution in American society. We’re all raised with sexist ideas about gender roles and what men and women can and can’t do. And not just can and can’t do, but should and shouldn’t do. Despite the advances in the workplace, things still look like the 1950s inside the home, with women doing the majority of the heavy lifting even if they are employed elsewhere full time. As with most forms of widespread oppression, these kinds of stale ideas hold back both women and men.

Benevolent misogynists seem supportive, and they probably think they are supportive, but they are actively upholding outdated stereotypes about ability on the basis of gender that put unnecessary limits on the women around them. When a man tells a woman she shouldn’t seek full time employment outside the home because he can’t soothe their child as well as she can, that’s not a compliment. It’s a way of keeping her wings clipped, but nicely, so she might not even notice she’s lost the ability to fly.

Socialization plays a huge part in this, and we’re all victims of it as well as perpetrators. Step one is to stop listening to the lullaby. Wake up and be intentional in your words and actions. And never accept a boundary masquerading as a compliment, no matter how nicely it’s offered.

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Filed Under: Activism, Feminism Tagged With: feminism, sexism, stereotypes, toxic masculinity

Yes, Black Folks Can Swim

January 29, 2018 by Tess

I was at a comedy club last week, chatting with a few friends. It wasn’t the best place for conversation, but we were making do, mostly ignoring the blaring audio from the amateur local comedians performing at the front of the room several feet away. Suddenly, a man on stage loudly proclaimed:

BLACK PEOPLE CAN’T SWIM.

My back was to the stage, so I put on my best what the actual fuck expression and turned to see who was behind the mic. It was some hipster looking white guy in his twenties rocking dreads. There were so many problematic attributes coalescing in a single individual, it took a moment for me to properly process the scene. I turned back to my friends, both white, who had momentarily frozen, along with the rest of the mostly white audience. The hipster went on to assure us:

What? This isn’t racist.

Phew. That was a relief to hear, because it had sounded really racist to me until he made it clear that it absolutely wasn’t.

He followed up with this gem:

Has anyone ever seen a black lifeguard?

No one responded.

Exactly! Because black people can’t swim.

Y’all, I honestly considered standing up, rushing the stage, and dropping knowledge about my years on a swim team and the fact that I was a certified SCUBA diver. But, as is usually the case with white folks indulging in casual assed racism masquerading as ‘jokes’, it wasn’t worth it. If I responded that way every time I heard some racist shit, I would never stop fighting, arguing, and jumping up from my seat in outrage.

What’s funny–not so much funny ha ha, as wow that’s fucked up funny–is there’s a nugget of truth hidden deep within the long held stereotype that black people can’t swim, and it’s not because the negro’s bones are just denser than those of white people (see? I have jokes too). What’s the answer to why fewer black folks swim?

Shocker, it’s racism!

Think back to the Jim Crow era south and segregation. We’ve all seen pictures of one water fountain labeled Whites Only and another right next to it labeled Colored Only. If blacks and whites couldn’t even share a fountain, what was the likelihood that they shared a public pool? If you guessed zero, you are correct. Public pools were also labeled Whites Only, but you wouldn’t often find a companion pool nearby marked Colored. That was of the see ya, wouldn’t wanna be ya brand of bad luck for black folks, many of whom had no access to aquatic methods of recreation and had to find diversion elsewhere on land.

If you were born and raised in an environment in which you never learned to swim and never really had access to large bodies of water, what do you think the chances are that you would grow up to teach your own kids how to swim? There’s no genetic defect that affects a black person’s ability to tread water. Many were simply kept from learning the skill for generations because of the color of their skin, and it never became part of their daily lives. As with many other things, what appears to be a deficiency among a specific racial group is actually the direct consequence of a culture rife with deep seated racism, and those effects are far reaching. This long persisting stereotype is the legacy of slavery and segregation, which is why it was so amazing when a black woman finally won an Olympic gold medal for swimming despite this legacy, turning that stereotype on its head before a national audience (go, Simone!).

So, yes, white hipster douchebag with dreads, black people can swim, and it’s racist for you of all people to assert otherwise to earn a few nervous laughs. Also, can we quit with the tired stereotype of the Mexican lawn maintenance worker? Yes, y’all, he went there next and spent several painful minutes beating that racist stereotype into the ground.

I’m sure he has a token black or Latino friend, though, so it’s fine, right?

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Filed Under: Activism, Racial Justice Tagged With: casual racism, racism, stereotypes

About Tess

I’m a writer who spends her day making things up for pay. I also moonlight as a community organizer for free …

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