It’s too bad..

Even as I’m affirmed by reading this, I’m saddened that so many people just can’t perceive the world from the same lens. I know countless women who claim they are not effected by sexism, are utterly confused or amused when I mention it. I think the horrible advent of American Slavery is the propulsion of the issue of racism to the font of people’s consciousness, which keeps people working on racism as an important issue and keeps individuals reflecting on ways they can not discriminate against blacks. (That’s not to mention other races–particularly Arabs or Latinos these days–who I think are all but ignored in the racism conversation.) Seriously though:

It’s too bad that rape, especially in war and in the military even when there is no war, is not seen as the emotional genocide that it is, stripping the self-wealth and humanity out of women all over the world. It’s too bad this doesn’t shove women’s rights to the front alongside racism.

It’s too bad that American sex-centered entertainment, which strips all fair and natural imagery and definition of sexual identity and sexual behavior out of human identity and replaces it with very few archetypes (the good girl, the fem fatal, damsel in distress, etc), isn’t seen as a cunning machine that causes disorder and distress in women, especially adolescent girls, and increasingly deviant behavior in all sexes because even while we are sex-crazed, we are offered no legitimately respectable model of sex and sexual behavior.

It’s too bad that in the U.S., strippers are often seen as empowered women using “what they’ve got” to get back what they can’t get in any other field of work–namely, equal pay (in fact women make more money than men in the sex industry), instead of a field that NO woman deems as their career of choice, where a majority of women are their because they are out of money, out of family, out of education, and have children to support on their own, where even the young women who choose to strip just to push the envelope or to make some quick money to support a college education, were coerced into it to begin with–gotten drunk, often by the owners of the clubs, and given preferential treatment as a “newby” so they want to continue, where women are subject to smoke, bad and flashing lighting, loud music, and the emotional instability of being called sexy and a whore in the same breath–it’s too bad that this position for women is completely reinforcing the image that woman are only worth what men can get from them–their sex (and reproduction).

It’s too bad that girls and women are sold all over the third world into brothels and sexual slavery, and this is not seen as enough evidence that misogyny and women’s rights should be in the front alongside racism.

Why I Love Her: Anita Hill

Anita Hill is particularly well-known for her 1991 sexual harassment testimony against then Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas. She had worked for him on several different occasions ten years earlier, and her testimony was graphic.

What is undeniably clear about this case is that the courts made Thomas’ case about race, and Hill’s case about sex. And by a narrow margin, 52:48, Clarance Thomas won. His testimony was filled allegations that Hill’s testimony were a subversive way of attacking him because he is black, and were related to previous discrimination he had felt as a black man acquiring power in politics. For shame that he created that possible relationship, thereby diminishing the validity of previous experiences of racism . He openly chastised the court for questioning his behavior towards Hill, using the race card to intimidate the white men into sacrificing a woman’s right to emotional and physical safety for a pat on the back for transcending racism.

Anita Hill is an example of courage, strength, and resolution, who continues to carry with her the stigma some have placed onto her: a liar or a deviant perverted crazy woman who was in love with Thomas to begin with.

During the hearing, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee had refused to let any expert testimony on sexual harassment enter the case. She was questioned as to why she would ever talk to such a man again, if her testimony were true. As June Jordan puts it in here essay Can I get a Witness?: “The senators didn’t seem to notice or to care that Thomas occupied the office of last recourse for victims of sexual harassment. And had the committee allowed any expert on the subject to testify, we would have learned that it is absolutely typical for victims to keep silent.”

Last year, When Thomas’ memior came out, and all of his supporters (including people who think Anita Hill is a liar or crazy person, and including people who think sexual harassment is a fairytale made up by manipulative women–i.e. misogynists) and all of his rage about the case came out into the public again, Anita Hill was faced with the question of whether or not to reengage with the debate that she officially lost in 1991. She courageously stepped up again to defend herself, and ultimately all women. You Go Girl!

It should also be noted that Anita Hill did not originally volunteer her testimony of being sexually harassed by Clarance Thomas. She was pointedly questioned by the FBI for that information, and she was simply telling the truth and following the law by providing the FBI with the information they wanted. Because of her courage, the U.S. culture around sexual harassment took a monumental turn towards exposure and empowerment for women to stand up for themselves.

It’s a shame that almost 20 years later, a lot of us still don’t know what or how to stick up for ourselves and each other when sexist comments and harassments are made. Many are passed off as jokes or harmless. Others are dismissed as unimportant because they are made by strangers we don’t plan to have to deal with ever again.

I believe that woman and men have a significant challenge to expose these things and deny them room in discourse and behavior. Between strangers, colleagues, and even friends and partners.

Sexism vs. Racism vs. Whhhaaaaa?

Okay, so in the past I have tried to illustrate the effects of deep-seeded sexism by likening it to racism in a way–a woman can’t walk into a grocery store stocked with male clerks, security guards, and deli personnel without having “The male gaze” following them; just as a black person can hardly walk into a grocery store stocked with white personnel without being profiled.

You could come up with a lot of anecdotal evidence that “I don’t feel sexism,” or “Where I am I feel pretty good.” But the fact is that most of us feel sexism and racism in almost every corner of our lives…. and when we don’t think it’s there, it’s just because we are not paying any attention to it, or something else that is good is taking center stage. For instance, a woman who has advanced in her company beyond her initial expectations and has the respect of her boss, is friends with most of her coworkers, and feels damned comfortable in her stride is doing relatively AWESOME compared to, say, her mom trying the same thing 40 years ago, and so has a much easier time ignoring the fact that Joe blow down the hall is always trying to trump her suggestions in planning meetings because she turned his date request down or that Johnny Jump Up on the second floor has one less degree than her and makes 30% more in pay in less years spent climbing the same ladder to corporate success. And she surely doesn’t notice that one of the reasons for his climb in salary (that started higher than hers in the first place) was that he asked for %40 more raises than she did over the past eight years, while our friend the woman sat tight , not believing that she had any right to such frequent pay raises.

Anyway, I could go on and on about the vague and hard to pin-down ways that woman are still oppressed, while I need not go into such diatribes about racism because it’s already on the tips of everyone’s tongues. The point is that it is not productive or wise to try to determine which “ism” is more oppressive. And it is humiliatingly ignorant to assume that racism is a more “interesting” topic than sexism (especially for women!) on the basis of it’s oppressive powers.

If Hillary Clinton wins the upcoming democratic nomination, it is not a loss for blacks. And if Barack Obama wins, it will be no more “interesting” than if we were to open the door to women in the presidency. Either of the candidates as president of the United States is a long-awaited step in the right direction of empowerment for long-oppressed people.

The sad part is that a lot of progressive people are rarely as ready and willing to reflect on, take workshops in, or discuss their sexism and its effects on our society to the same degree that they are with racism. I’m not sure how many people I speak for, but to me the dismissal of sexism to “secondary” ism status denies my condition as a woman.

Here is a must read article threshing out more on this complicated topic.