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?

---

This blog is proudly sponsored by

If you would like to view this entry with a pale colour scheme click here. If you would like to subscribe to my blog click here for RSS or here for atom.

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.

[(Anonymous)]

This http://www.feminism101.com/ ?

[(Anonymous)]

Jennie - though you've not named me, unsurprisingly I do get this is aimed at (or at least triggered by) me.

I can think of a couple of occasions now when you've accused me of sexism. Each time (from memory) it's because you think I've overlooked tweets/blogs by women. Each time I've pointed out the unfairness of the accusation.

Last night, for example you accused me of ignoring comments from female Lib Dem tweeters, even though none were posted during the time I trawled Twitter for comments relating to Zac Goldsmith. I pointed this out to you on the thread we're not mentioning: you didn't respond just directed another insult at me. (Though for all I know a couple of those I mentioned were female tweeters: their usernames weren't sex-specific).

It's easy to make a casual suggestion of sexism, and there's not much I can do to defend myself without looking petty or falling into typical alpha-male argument wankery.

But just so you know, I find your unfair accusations of sexism hurtful. Maybe that's not their intention, and/or maybe you don't care so long as I learn from the experience.

In terms of the more general point, that women don't like to self-promote as much as men, I agree. Allow me to make two points in return ...

Ever since I started the Lib Dem Blogs Golden Dozen I've tried to ensure it is not my personal selection: it is those of our readers. That's either because the posts we feature are read by lots of people, or because they were nominated by others. This isn't about me not being arsed to trawl the internet for posts, expecting you to do my work for me. It's about being true to the aim of Lib Dem Voice: that it's not my site, but 'our place to talk'.

And that's my second point: you don't have to self-promote to increase the numbers of women featured in the Golden Dozen. All you have to do is nominate a blog-post by another female blogger. You can do so by email - voice@libdemvoice.org - if you don't like LibDig. It's your choice.

Stephen Tall

[pmoodie]

The little corner of the internet that I paddle around in is largely free of these shouty, self-promoting male bloggers. I'm not sure how you change things and make that true everywhere, except by encouraging women to shout even louder.

[lizw]

Beats me. I'm one of those who really don't like self-promotion - never have, it seems like a pointless waste of energy. I'd much rather promote the substance than the person - the cause or the content. So I want the solution to be a system where we collectively promote the causes and ideas that deserve it, where individual self-promotion is not a necessary step to promoting the cause or the idea, and where men do it less. I very emphatically do not want one where women do it more. I have no idea how to get there from here.

[sassy_scot]

I did a post the other week suggesting that people might like to vote for me in the annual willy waving contest. I also gave the nod to your Innerbrat against the machine campaign.I got a comment from a man suggesting that it was utterly wrong for me to be promoting myself in this way and that I was "better than that".

I replied that the main reason for my post was to promote Lib Dems and women who are dramatically under represented in these lists and if I didn't ask for votes no bugger else was going to do it for me. I think he got it in the end, but I doubt he would have challenged a man in these circumstances.

[joeotten.blogspot.com]

OK so maybe this is just ignorance, so by all means tell me to RTFM, or have a go, or whatever, but I have some sympathy with Stephen here. And I haven't seen the original dispute so I am probably missing something important.

If the problem is differential amounts of self-publicity (and mutual publicity) between men and women on average, and you don't have a good solution, then how's Stephen going to have a good solution either?

The blogosphere is buried in a sea of mediocrity, and so the amount of publicity is everything. Well and quality. But if you look beyond what has publicity and quality, then 99% will be mediocre and you will be wasting your time.

We all in a sense read what we have stumbled upon rather than what is great - hence our contempt of the willy waving competition - and linkblogging is much the same. If we had a duty to link on merit rather than by accident, then linkblogging would be impossible. And a linkblogger who linked to equal numbers of men and women, still wouldn't be treating fairly the individual women whose blogs are better than any of them. And it's about fairness to individuals, rather than arbitrarily defined groups in the end isn't it?

Also - said at great risk I feel - I'm not convinced that there is no genetic element to the average difference in appetite for self-promotion between men and women. Millennia of selective evolutionary pressure seem to have rewarded men for appearing to excel and women for being safe. Clearly there is socialisation going on as well, which can and should be fought against, but I fear we humans are imperfectible on this score.