Canadian_watcher wrote:another way that a destructive sort of sexism plays out in our culture is the (not so) subtle way that some men will react to challenges from another man, versus the same sort of challenges from women.
I say this gently, because it might be perceived as a challenge, but I think it's worth noting. In serves to 'put women in their place' because it makes women feel like they will be less able to put forth an opinion or suggest a change. "Pick you battles" becomes something different for women, in my experience.
I'd like to offer a couple of anecdotes/observations.
Recently a very close female relative of mine (Let's call her Lucy) came to me in an extreme state of emotional stress. She had just had a fight with her brother (let's call him Joe) over an issue that has been brewing for awhile. Her brother is doing something she perceives to be fundamentally immoral. One of the things she said is that "Joe would not be doing this if our father or (let's call him John, one of their siblings that is already deceased) were alive." At the time I did not recognize the import of that statement. I thought alot about the situation afterwards. The significance of what Lucy was saying is that she feels disrespected. She knows that Joe would not do what he is doing if their father or John were alive because he would not want to let them down or face their condemnation or in other words he would respect them too much to do what he is doing. It follows that since they are not around and he is doing what he is doing then Joe does not respect Lucy. Lucy is deeply wounded by this and I think it may be the core of her pain. I only came to this insight in retrospect. That's one of those blind spots. I quibbled with C2W earlier up thread, "that she could not have it both ways", namely that misogyny/sexism is everywhere, all around us, and therefore impossible not to notice and it's everywhere all around us and it's therefore hard to notice, like fish not noticing water, to which she politely declined to respond.
I suppose I really don't know which is true myself. Perhaps they're both true, but in different contexts. In any event I think this particular blind spot, not recognizing how much pain a woman might feel by a gender dynamic that is so prevalent and ingrained it initially escaped my notice, is one which is probably more a function of the latter. To be fair to myself I am very close to this situation and so I may have other biases and distortions in play.another way that a destructive sort of sexism plays out in our culture is the (not so) subtle way that some men will react to challenges from another man, versus the same sort of challenges from women
One thing I haven't heard mentioned in this thread is the largely subconscious undercurrent of the threat of physical force which has a mostly invisible but nonetheless demonstrable effect on the way men (and women?) interact. I have observed with many men raised in my culture (America) that there is a subconscious thought experiment that has to take place (sometimes this has to become more than a thought experiment and progress to ritualized body language/behavior) which is basically an assessment of who would win in a knock down drag out fight. I mean if it came to it and we had to fight for some reason who would kick who's ass. With some men this is right on the surface and has to be settled right away. I don't like making analogies with pack animals, but in this case it is particularly useful. A pack of dogs is only ever in disharmony when the hierarchy is in question and dominant and submissive roles are not clear. With some men this is just a fact of the way they interact. They are usually pretty boorish, but not always. With other men this issue of who would win a fight to the death is completely suppressed, but I would argue never sompletely absent. I will confess that there have been times when I was in the midst of a fight with another man, bordering on a physical confrontation, and when I was younger occasionally spilling over into a physical altercation, and I knew that others who witnessed this "interaction", two jackasses being two jackasses, would be less likely to want to confront me in the future, on anything. So I learned that being aggressive served a defensive purpose. On a different level it works in other contexts too, like the RI message board, but one of the great things about the internet is that the background dynamic of physical violence is a non-issue, generally speaking. It's all about what you think and our physical presence, including dominance cues, have no bearing.
Food for thought, fwiw.
