Let me rant
a little bit about the “S” word. Conservatives think it’s nonsense, and we
liberals like to think we’ve risen (or are actively rising) above it. I mean SEXISM,
of course.
Some sexism
is so overt it’s beating us all over the head with a 2x4. Girls’ toys vs. boys’
toys. Dresses vs. pants. High heels. Makeup. Hair products. And on and on…
Consider the
election. We’re so afraid of women, or we have so little regard and respect for
them, that we’ll take a nutbag, egomanaicle,
child-raping lunatic over a woman. We hem & haw and blame it on the
Russians, Hillary’s failed campaign, the FBI, the disenfranchised & ignored
working class, blahblahblahblah, but someone finally had the balls to call it
what it is: SEXISM (https://medium.com/@kmassa/hillary-clinton-lost-because-of-sexism-say-it-3c7a89e548cd#.p8sus5jcz). Because people squirm at the thought of a “lady”
running the show. Gawd, she’ll make us
all pack Kleenex and button our coats. And then she'll have a period!
Or take
equal pay, for example. COME ON! This is 2017! Seriously?!?
Anyone, I mean absolutely ANYONE, who
thinks that women earning 21.4% LESS than men doing the same job with the same
qualifications & experience is justified, is a SEXIST PIG (Ouch. Hope that
stings.).
But the most
insidious kind of sexism is deep inside, like a slow-growing, non-fatal cancer.
We look just fine on the outside, but inside, the cancer is self-replicating,
eating away at us, and keeping us weak, but just so’s it’s barely noticeable.
It’s so deep in our blood that maybe only a good leeching will finally leach (bwahaha)
it out.
You’ve felt this undercurrent of sexism: Men are assertive, aggressive, determined,
forthright. Women are pushy, bitchy, negative, bossy. Athletes (understood to
be male) vs. female athletes. Musicians (understood to be male) vs. female
musicians. Grrrr.
Or take, for
example, domestic partnerships. I’m of a generation spawned in the 50’s and
60’s. We were all about that fight-against-The Man, anti-establishment, free
love, braless, progressive thought mumbo-jumbo. Until we settled. Suddenly,
here we are, living a life so close to the goll-dern Cleavers it’ll make your
hippie head spin. We women may not be scrubbing in shirt-waist dresses and
pearls, but we’re still doing most of the scrubbing.
Even in the most enlightened
households, those replicating cancer cells drive men OUTSIDE (shoveling,
garbage, car maintenance, tree-trimming, mowing, etc.), and keep women INSIDE
(cleaning, cooking, laundry, dusting, vacuuming, baking, and most importantly,
child-rearing). Men are workers and adventurers; women (even if they work
full-fricking-time outside the home) are domestics. Even in “egalitarian”
households where partners “share” duties, you can usually find OUTSIDE/INSIDE
residuals. We chalk up the differences or imbalance to differing interests,
talents, time, or whatever, but at its root—in the blood—it’s that same old SEXISM
that we just keep passing along, from one generation to the next.
Or here’s
another one. I teach college English. Not only is there still a gender pay gap
in higher ed (http://www.chronicle.com/blogs/data/2014/04/11/there-is-a-gender-pay-gap-in-academe-but-it-may-not-be-the-gap-that-matters/), men also still hold most of the higher
paying faculty and administrative positions, something called the
“representation gap.” I don’t know that anyone’s come up with a satisfactory
(or any) explanation for this, but I have one: my School Marm theory.
My theory
goes like this: women who teach are school marms. They wear dresses or casual
clothes, because they aren’t really doing any serious work beyond readin’ and
writin’. They’re just keeping busy until that man comes along to marry them and
take them INSIDE, where they belong. They’re nurturing babysitters, minding
society’s brood. Men who teach, however, are professors. They’re intellectuals.
They stimulate and challenge and mold the next generation of professors (if the
future marms learn a little something along the way, well isn’t that just
darling). Professors wear ties and suit jackets and pressed pants, but if they
wear jeans and dirty 90’s band t-shirts, that’s okay too because they’re
quirky, rogueish, temperamental, or flawed. And they’re just so darned brainy they
can’t help it. And boys will be boys.
In higher
ed, we like to think we’re well beyond School Marm. But she’s alive and well,
not just in disparities in pay and representation, but also in student
evaluations (https://tcf.org/content/commentary/student-evaluations-skewed-women-minority-professors/). Students take male teachers more
seriously. School Marm, like Caveman dragging Cavewoman around by her hair, is
so deep in our blood that it skews our perceptions and values. We don’t VALUE
female teachers as much as male teachers. (In some states we just don’t value
teaching. Period.) I’ve seen parents completely delighted to find that their
kids have a male elementary teacher.
We EXPECT elementary teachers to be women, and a male teacher will be “better
for the kids” (I’ve actually heard this), tougher, more serious, etc.
Here’s
another one. I have a dear friend who’s a retired pastor. Churches, of course,
are bastions of sexism. I won’t even discuss the Catholic church’s spreading “cancer”
of institutionalized patriarchy, and I LOVE the Catholic church…the ritual, the
mystery, the sanctuary of it all.
Even in
other churches, where women CAN be clergy, sexism still has a good hold. Male
pastors are leaders of the church, God’s right hand, mediators between God and Man
(not so much between God and women, because any male pastor will tell you,
women should be busy singing in the choir, supervising the Nursery, or setting
up coffee in Fellowship Hall). Male pastors HAVE authority. They SPEAK to God
and know God’s intentions. God wants you
to hold firm! Cling to the rock!
Female pastors, on the other hand, are motherly, counselors, nurturers,
patters-on-back-ers. They APPEAL to authority (God’s, The Book’s, the bishop’s,
the synod’s, etc.). There, there, there.
God loves you, and so do I.
Sadly, I
don’t have a solution for any of this other than my leech idea, which isn’t
likely to be popular. And I’m really weary. At 60, I’m tired of raising the
same red flag over and over (nagging…another “woman” thing). I’m tired of all
the excusing and cover-up and pretending. I’m tired of a man who does dishes
once in a while thinking he’s enlightened and has “liberated” some poor woman. In
some ways, I’d prefer the caveman days, where there’s no pretense of equality.
Just drag home a stegosaurus, baby, and I’ll cook ‘er up for you. But you might
want to remember, women who cook MAKE
FIRE.
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