The Gordian Knot of instituitionalised sexism - a stream of consciousness

[miss_s_b]

Because I am poorly and have no spoons, I got into a fight I possibly shouldn't have started last night, with someone who winds me up with his sexist behaviour at regular intervals. I'm not going to link to it, because I don't want this post to be about that specific incident, but about the generality. It ended up with him saying to me that I have no right to complain about him not linking to women's views unless I, personally, spoonfeed him women's views to link to.

Now, my instinctive reaction to that is to think fuck you! Why should I do all your work for you, you lazy git?... But that's possibly counterproductive for two reasons. Firstly, and most importantly, as I have discussed before, men will happily self-promote in ways that women won't. Mediocre men will shout from the rooftops about how awesome they are, and the more mediocre they are, the more they shout; awesome women, because of shyness, or socialisation that women who shout are harpies, or insecurity about their awesomeness, are much less likely to self-promote. This is made worse by the fact that very few people will look beyond what is waved in front of their faces, so the shouty men get noticed and the quiet women don't; very few people are willing to hurt somebody else (of whatever gender) by telling them they are mediocre if they are, and so the mediocre people get promotion they don't deserve, just by being shouty (Iain Dale is a PRIME example of that); and thus the cycle that to be noticed half as much as a man, a woman has to be twice as good continues in our supposedly post-feminist times.

The second reason my reaction is counter-productive is male priviledge. Male opinion aggregators are used to being spoonfed. This is unfair and annoying, but telling them to look beyond their spoonfeeding is telling them to do more work that they don't see a reason to do. Even if that were not the case, it takes a special kind of person to resist being spoonfed, why would anybody give themselves extra work to do?

This gives us two reasons why the blokosphere is self-perpetuating, and those two reasons feed into and reinforce each other. Even a completely non-sexist feminist ally man will often unconsciously perpetuate sexism under these circumstances. This is a problem I have been talking about for years, and I still don't have a suitable sword to cut this Gordian Knot. Nobody else seems to have one either.

How do we go about forging one, people?

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Comments

[andrewducker]

A spoonfeeding website?

I'm a big believer in the power of FAQs, and being able to link people to the feminism 101 FAQ nowadays is incredibly useful.

[londonkds]

See the comment thread under yours.

[miss_s_b]

I find that the reaction of people to things like being linked to finally feminism 101 is that I am attacking them, that I want to publicly humiliate them, etc. It's kind of like when someone asks you a question and you link them to Just Fucking Google It. People take it as an insult.

[andrewducker]

That kind of thing is always going to irk some people, because they feel they are having a 1:1 discussion with you, and suddenly you're not giving them answers, but pointing them at homework.

Short of not engaging with people at all, and simply talking about the problems yourself on your own journal, unless you're willing to put a lot of effort into it, I'm not sure what can be done about this.

[miss_s_b]

And that's the issue I have, really. I want to solve this, but I don't have the time or the spoons to fight this fight on several fronts for several hours every day.

[telegramsam]

In my personal experience, most people who hold sexist attitudes do not care and do not want to change and their "challenge" to anyone professing views against their own to "educate" them is really just an attempt to get them to STFU and GTFO and stop bothering them. There really *isn't* anything you can say to them that isn't just going to piss them off, so you might as well just piss them off and let them be pissed off and hope some of it is eventually going to sink in through their thick skulls.

Most people aren't interested in problems that don't affect them directly in ways they can readily perceive.

You can lead a horse to water, etc etc...

Yes, I'm feeling bitter today. I'd mail you some extra spoons but I can't find any at the moment...