Now We Persist, Resist--and Win
Now We Persist, Resist—and Win
Feeling fired up after the Women’s March? Join the Feminist Alert Network (http://org.salsalabs.com/o/1400/p/salsa/web/common/public/signup?signup_page_KEY=8567) to remain involved in the movement—and to keep marching on with us toward equality!
On the morning of January 21, I woke up and started getting ready to go to the Walkway Over the Hudson to attend a sister event for the Women’s March. I was excited to see the growing enthusiasm for the march in the days leading up to it, but nothing prepared me for what I was about to see as I started scrolling through my social media feeds as I started my day. In a Facebook group, people adorned in pink “pussyhats” had already started posting pictures from sister marches from all over the world. People were marching in South Korea, Kenya, Portugal, Scotland, Italy, Ireland, Germany, Latvia, Malawi… My partner and I headed to our march and from blocks away, I could see the signs. I could see the hats. There was no parking. We left the car several blocks away and joined the march—along with an estimated 5,000 others. While we all marched for different reasons, and had different motivations, the driving force behind the organization of the Women’s March on Washington was how the “the past election cycle has insulted, demonized, and threatened many of us.”
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Scholars Glick and Fiske describe two different forms of sexism that women experience in their work—benevolent and hostile sexism. Hostile sexism is typically the form we most picture when we think of sexist attitudes: overtly misogynistic or oppressive behaviors towards women. Benevolent sexism is often not the image conjured up when we think of someone fitting these criteria. Acts of benevolent sexism are chivalrous, kind and seemingly “protective”—but implicit in these acts is the reinforcement of the patriarchal idea that women necessitate help or guidance. When women are treated with deference by men because there are societal expectations that this is what they ought to do, all are learning implicitly that women are in need of this protected status—and men are singularly capable of providing it.
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However, Becker and Wright also found that hostile sexism provokes women to action. Women exposed to overt, misogynistic and aggressive sexism are much more so likely to refuse to tolerate inequity. And what we are witnessing now is a wave of good old fashioned hostile sexism. The sexism that our generation has largely faced has not really been the overt, outlandish sexism our mothers and grandmothers protested decades ago. We mostly only see that sexism in films, or read about it or occasionally glimpse it in our older relatives who “don’t know any better.” But we are still surrounded by it—it just hides in subtly, in micro-aggressions, in the subconscious ways that all of us perceive ourselves and each other. If I said that unconscious sexism played a role in how the left behaved this past election cycle, I wouldn’t be the first. I’ve spent more than a decade in universities suffering through mansplaining from well-meaning men who would describe themselves as feminists—and I’m not the only one this happens to.
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Hostile sexism is not that soft, sweet, paternalistic and chivalrous sexism that pats us on the head, diminishes our feelings of competence and soothes us into unknowing complacency. It’s the sort that makes over 3 million people get out of bed early on a Saturday, put on a pussyhat and march—and keep marching. Hostile sexism will make us resist and keep resisting. Hostile sexism will make us persist and keep persisting. Hostile sexism might just shape a new era in the movement.
http://msmagazine.com/blog/2017/02/16/hostile-sexism-trump-administration/