Introducing Prejudice (Sexism & Racism)
A
friend of mine had a horrible experience when I was preparing this
lecture on sexism and the next on racism for the first time. He was
playing video games online, and one of the players asked if anybody was
black in the most offensive way possible. My friend, who is black, said
he did not know how to respond and simply said nothing in return. He
said he was still not sure if he should have said something or not, and
that this was the first OVERT racism he had experienced in the new
millennium. He made a further observation that I have found quite
valuable in describing racism and sexism in America today: While OVERT
prejudice is often and in most places rare today, COVERT prejudice is
constant and continuous. While slurs, mob violence and other open acts
of racism are rare, we still live in a culture that is racially divided
with institutions plagued by institutional racism. While women wear
pants and are not openly called “doll” or “baby” so much anymore, the
glass ceiling remains alive and well.
Just
a little while ago, overt prejudice was the law of the land. Women
were told openly, by teachers and scientists, that they were
intellectually and socially inferior to men. I have an older co-worker
who told me that when he was in elementary school in San Diego in the
early 1950s, his class put on a production of Little Black Sambo, a
British children’s story about a boy in India. He got the main part of
Sambo which he performed in blackface, applied by his teacher. Because
the British called Indians and Africans “blacks”, but this term is not
applied to Indians in America, the children in the chorus were dressed
up in overalls and mammy dresses and the teacher had them sing ‘Camp
Town Races’ and other traditional black songs from the days of slavery
even though Sambo is Indian and not ‘black’ or from the South.
It
is a sign of progress that overt racism and sexism has become covert.
This change has happened almost entirely in the last 50 years, since
the 60s and the triumphs made by the civil rights and feminist
movements. Unfortunately this change has convinced many, both right and
left wing, that racism and sexism no longer exist in America. The
media, which downplays America’s social problems (as we looked at with
propaganda), ignores racism and sexism for the most part. Worst of all,
the few times it pays attention to these problems is when they serve
the interests of the dominant majority or powers that be. As my friend
noted, if you point at covert racism as a marginalized person, YOU are
called racist. We hear about white people losing opportunities to
affirmative action policies, but not about racism against minority
groups that cost them the same sorts of opportunities. Just after 9/11,
feminists made brief appearances on news programs to tell us of the
evils that traditional Islamic culture inflicts upon women, and then
feminism disappeared again from our televisions.
I
enjoy looking at the animal kingdom to see the root behaviors of our
human problems. While the apes are our most direct ancestors, the
octopus is studied by researchers as one of our most important and
ancient ancestors because it has a brain very much like our brain stem,
the most basic and early part of our brains. Thus, studying octopi
allows us to study the most basic behaviors of animals and ourselves.
In one study, researchers took an octopus and shocked it whenever they
showed it a teddy bear. Quite understandably, the octopus soon became
very scared of the bear, but the experiment did not stop there. They
took a second octopus, put it in a separate tank next to the other
traumatized octopus so the two could not communicate other than by
sight. They then showed the teddy bear to the first octopus, and let
the second octopus watch the first be frightened. They then took away
the first octopus and showed the second the teddy bear. Surprisingly,
the second octopus was even more frightened of the teddy bear than the
first. The researchers concluded that octopi can watch each other, as
all animals with brains can, and learn about what they should like or
fear from the behaviors of others. They also concluded, important for
considering prejudice, that the second octopus was more scared than the
first because it knew it should be scared of the teddy bear but did not
know why it should be scared.
Consider
that covert and institutional prejudice are learned reactions and
fears, and they need never be consciously or overtly expressed or
explained by those who teach or learn these reactions. In this sense,
covert prejudice can be more severe and harder to unlearn because it is
never consciously or overtly expressed and so there is no opportunity
for direct criticism.
A
good (or rather horrible) example of covert racism is covered in a
famous article The Myth of Model Minority. The article was written in
the 90s by Rosalind Chou, then an Asian-American college student who was
upset by many articles in Time and Newsweek that warned of rising
Asian-American voices as a new “special-interest” group. These articles
seemed to speak with the voice of the “average” American, in the name
of “the common interest”, a voice that feared Asian voices becoming like
African and Latino voices of dissent. Apparently, the “common
interest” is threatened by minority groups who have “special interests”
that can pull in the opposite direction, and warns that while Asians
have been quiet and supportive of the common interest in the past there
are signs that they are becoming dissenting opinions like the voices of
Africans and Latinos. Chou notes that Time, Newsweek and the mainstream
media often speak with such a voice, a voice which does not identify
itself as particular or white at all but is speaking in opposition to
all other interests. Why are Asian and African and Latino American
interests not “our” common interests? This is one of the dominant ways
that covert racism remains a constant and very real experience for many
Americans.
Today,
we cover sexism and the reactions of feminists to the oppression of
women. Just like for Asian Americans, feminists are not “us” in the
media but a special interest group that opposes the common interest.
Myths and Realities of Gender Differences
The
myth is that women are docile, non-violent, unconfident, incompetent,
and emotional. Grossman already has told us that there is no difference
between men and women in combat physically or psychologically. Women
are capable of violence and even rape, though our society does not
recognize this yet (Melody’s lesbian serial rapist story, female gang
members story, female serial murderers as poisoning, girls style of
picking on people vs. boys). Women are not unconfident or emotional
compared to men. Consider that it has been said women have a
emotional-sexual cycle that lasts 28 days, men’s lasts 6 minutes.
What, then, are the differences between men and women?
Most
obviously, there are physiological differences that relate to sex and
procreation. In addition, there are two dynamics of psychology in which
women differ from men.
First,
men tend to seek power through NOT being social, isolating themselves
and their opinions, whereas women tend to seek power through BEING
social, interacting with others. The two best examples are 1) classic
women ‘let’s talk’ vs. men ‘I don’t want to talk about it’ that becomes
strained in many heterosexual relationships (choosing a restaurant,
where women wants to discuss and man wants her to just pick), and 2)
male boss ‘don’t bring it to me until it’s done and done right’ vs.
female boss ‘let’s go over the details so we are on the same page’
difference of support offered.
Second,
in sexuality, men like to watch women and women like to be watched, as
one author has said, to watch themselves being watched. Women want to
be desired, whereas men want to get what they desire. BOTH OF THESE
differences are relative and to a degree, a leaning apart as I like to
say. Thus, men like being watched and desired, and women don’t want to
talk about everything.
Other
than these RELATIVE oppositions, there is no good evidence to suggest
that men and women are very much different at all. The work of Piaget
suggests that men and women undergo the same mental development in the
same set of stages at roughly the same ages.
History of Sexism and Feminism
In
apes and the most ancient nomadic and tribal societies, there is
evidence that women often had status and leadership positions. Women
were shamans, leaders, and there were often central female mother gods.
As people began to collect into city states, we can see patriarchy
increase.
Why
did this happen? The best explanation so far, one that does not rely
on any inability of women, is the increased size of the community. When
people lived in small communities, women could raise children at the
center of the village, as the political center. As city states
increased in size, it made it increasingly difficult to raise one’s
children at the public center. Thus, women retreated into the home, and
men, who had to be the go-for before now were the ones who could
venture out of the home and into the centers of political activity.
Today, devices allow women to raise children while fully participating
in public life, but women are still confined in a way to the home in
balancing life between home and career.
When
we look at the cultures of the world and their historical development,
we can see that all cultures have taken part in a similar oppression of
women, but at the same time women have had increasing power in society
and new movements have to appeal to women to take off. Consider that
Buddhism, Christianity and Islam (the three largest cultures yet) all
had to offer women better status and rights than they had previously
(Naga princess story of Buddhism, stories of Jesus involving women and
men cheating equally bad, Islamic law and divorce and consensual sex),
but all three oppressed women (nuns can only teach kids).
Modern
society has continued the trend, such that today women have equal legal
status in many nations but covert sexism and a lack of women owning
property persists. A united Nations 2004 report claims that women work
20% more a day on job and home together than men do (10 ½ hours to men 8
¾ hours). Women are 51% of the population (technically the MAJORITY of
the population), do 66% of the work, get 10% of the income, and
worldwide own 1% of the property. Thus, sexism (overt AND covert) is
quite alive, in spite of counter claims.
(Performance
art piece with empty area of museum with card that says women who clean
are the artists who have performed in this space).
Feminism
is the movement in reaction to sexism and prejudice against women. The
basic idea is that women should have the same status as men in society,
or “women are people too” (Kate Weber from high school assembly asks
crowd ‘Who thinks women are equal to men?’ most everyone raised hands,
‘Then you are all feminists!’, impressed me much). It is a shame that
people, men but ALSO women, are afraid of calling themselves feminists,
largely from the backlash of the 80s between the second wave and third
wave of feminism which said that “militant feminists” “hate men”.
There are three waves, each building on the last and addressing new issues from the last wave.
The first wave was the women’s suffrage movement of the 1920s in America and Britain.
The
most famous figure is Susan B. Anthony. She argued that the abortion
issue should be set aside to concentrate on women’s right to vote as an
adult citizen and women’s right to refuse sex to their husbands (note
Mohammed in the Ahadith says this in 600 CE, with problems today).
The first wave, not of course known as that till the second wave, ended in 1919 with 19th amendment to the constitution.
The
second wave was the civil rights movement, the late 60s and early 70s
which is also called the women’s liberation movement or ‘women’s lib’.
Defined by Carol Hanisch’s phrase “The personal is political”, took off
in early 60s and culminated in the civil rights act of 1966 (backed by
both NOW and NAACP, the biggest US anti-sexism and racism groups
together). While the first wave said ‘this is America so we deserve to
vote’, the second wave was part of anti-establishment left movement that
said that America was a corrupt institution that needed to be changed.
Simone
De Beauvoir wrote The Second Sex in France in 1953, arguing that women
had been marginalized as ‘The OTHER’ by men using Hegel’s idea of the
master-slave dialectic (my German Hegel professor ‘a woman needs a man
like a fish needs a bicycle’ speaking of feminists using Hegel).
.
The
Feminine Mystique (1963) by Betty Friedan was another big book of the
time (much more published in America than Marxist De Beauvoir’s),
arguing that women were not feeling fulfilled as homemakers and mothers,
and they needed an identity for themselves as individuals beyond the
identity of the family (valium in the 50s, TV’s Madmen).
The major criticism of the movement, which only fully rose in the third wave:
Gloria
Jean Watkins, known as ‘bell hooks’, early critic of 2nd wave as white
middle class women empowerment that ignores all else in the name of
‘feminism’, thus hooks’ ‘womanism’.
The
third wave was after the 80s backlash against the 60s progressive
movements that began in the early 90s and continues today. The third
wave tried to not only pay attention to black women, Latina women, third
world women, but also to break down the idea of women as essentially
different from men but equal.
The
two big issues, which are still being fought out today, are 1) Is
gender a subjective construct (in the mind) or social reality (in the
world)? And 2) Did feminism accomplish what it set out to achieve, or
did it in part hurt its own efforts in telling women that sex makes them
oppressed? I was talking with a co-worker the other day, and she said
her son and his friends in high school think that feminists are hippie
women who don’t shave their arm pits, hate men and think that the
oppression of women is a thing of the past. Notice that this deals with
these two issues: the kids misunderstand feminists as both anti-sex and
not recognizing the battle is over.
First
Issue: Structuralism of 50s & 60s vs. Post-Structuralism after 60s.
De Beauvoir says that ‘one is not born a woman, one becomes a woman’.
Judith Butler (I saw speak on Wed) says that gender identity is
performative. Both of these figures thus back the poststructuralist
conception, that identity is created and performed.
Second
Issue: If a woman puts on makeup and wears a short skirt, is she being
oppressed or is she actively expressing her individual sexuality?
Second wave came under fire from the third wave because feminists often
told women that if they tried to be sexy they were being deceived and
made into property (vs. my friend from Berkeley at the Lusty Lady,
working for prostitute’s rights here and in the third world). This drew
a fight between anti-pornography and prostitution feminists and younger
pro-sex feminism. Pro-sex feminists ask, even if we are talking of
abusive male style porn (vs. porn FOR lesbians), do you want to make
porn illegal? Should we try to deny men watching women and lust, or
should we empower the individual woman to live as freely and equally as
men in a complex and messy world?
This
is still a big issue, as many feminist authors have argued that TV and
movies today SEEM to be pro-feminist (Sex and the City, Ali McBeal,
Brigit Jones’ Diary) but in fact they are stories where a working white
woman (and her friends) try to find the perfect man to find happiness.
Grrrl punk movement of the 90s, lead group Bikini Kill as third wave branch.
