8/1/12

Complaining about Sexism

Greta Christina says complaining about sexism and other forms of oppression is a Catch-22: if we don't complain, the problem remains invisible, but if we do complain, we
... get accused of “playing the victim card.” We get accused of making up the marginalization, or exaggerating it, or going out of our way to look for it, or twisting innocent events to frame them in this narrative of victimhood, or trying to manipulate people into giving us our way by scoring sympathy points we haven’t earned.
If wish I could just agree and move on.  Here's the part I do agree with. Yes, it's risky complaining about sexism. You can have a completely well-founded complaint, yet find things just getting worse if you complain.  I've had this dilemma myself.  Recently I was at a philosophy seminar and a male participant did something to me I considered sexist*. I thought about discussing the incident here or elsewhere, but complaining does tend to elicit skepticism.  Are you sure you read that right?  Are you being overly touchy?  Complaining about sexism also seems to trigger outbursts of sexist rage in some quarters -- I'm talking about the secular blogosphere now.  So you have to weigh your options before you complain.  Sometimes you can't raise consciousness or rectify anything by complaining. Sad but true, and yes, that's frustrating.

Here's why I can't just agree with Greta Christina and move on.  But first--a tad more expression of solidarity.  Women need to stand up for each other at least in the sense of jointly acknowledging that there are still major problems for women in all sorts of contexts.   There's something to the old lefty rule that you don't cross a picket line.  Questioning Greta Christina here is a bit like crossing the feminist picket line...

But I have to do it. While it's frustrating that complaints are sometimes greeted with excessive skepticism and even sexist rage, it's certainly not true that everyone should take every complaint at face value.  Sometimes people actually do exaggerate, misread situations, judge them by inappropriate standards, etc.  Sometimes it's ambiguous or debatable what qualifies as appropriate behavior in a certain situation.   If I had talked about the incident in the seminar room at this blog, it wouldn't have been fair to expect universal assent.  Right?  Right!

If you read the rest of her post, you'll see Greta Christina is trying to use the Catch-22 theory to defuse criticism (from people the likes of me, in fact). That just doesn't work.  Though it's generally true that complaints about sexism elicit excessive skepticism and criticism, any specific complaint does have to hold up under critical scrutiny. You can't write off your critics as just putting you under a frustrating Catch-22.

Bet you're curious about the incident in the seminar room!  If I talk about it publicly I'm going to do it here.  I'd urge women in the secular community to create a similar forum. It's a great way to amass a lot of data, and stop individual women from having to endure the sexist rage backlash.  That's clearly a reality (if you follow these things, you'll know that's true), and nobody's exaggerating about it. 

* I should clarify, to protect the innocent: the guilty party was not a member of my own department.

6 comments:

bowmanthebard said...

I think you should clarify what you mean by the word 'sexism'. Some of the misunderstanding and lack of sympathy you describe sounds like a symptom of "incommensurability" to me.

For what it's worth, I would describe as "sexist" any act that does not give due (i.e. equal) consideration to someone's interests because of his or her sex. Likewise, I would describe as "racist" any act that does not give due (i.e. equal) consideration to someone's interests because of their race.

Yet I have met people who seem to use the word 'sexism' to apply to "any act, utterance or even private thought that women might find disagreeable". Obviously, there is great scope for equivocation here. Shouldn't we make an effort to be clear and explicit about what we mean individually when we use these words?

Jean Kazez said...

I think most people have a pretty good grip on what "sexist" means, and I would assume my reader would just employ that understanding. Of course not just any unappealing behavior is sexist. Sexists respond to gender in an unjust, discriminatory fashion. That's what I'm accusing the seminar participant of doing.

Deepak Shetty said...

If you read the rest of her post, you'll see Greta Christina is trying to use the Catch-22 theory to defuse criticism
I don't get the same impression (but then you'd expect that)
Is there something specific that you are responding to?

Jean Kazez said...

Deepak, I think her column is quite clear. If I tried to paraphrase, you'd no doubt tell me I didn't paraphrase her exactly right, so let's not go there. If you don't see her as criticizing her critics, so be it.

Greta Christina said...

Jean: Thank you for the expression of solidarity. But I think you misunderstood my post. I didn't say that every complaint of marginalization should be taken at face value. I said that they shouldn't be met with the accusation that "you're playing the victim card." It's an accusation that renders marginalization invisible, for the reasons I outlined in the piece.

If someone disagrees with a complaint about sexism or some other marginalization, they should say so -- although they should do so carefully, and thoughtfully, and do their homework on this form of marginalization first to see if their objection has already been answered eleventy billion times. But they shouldn't, IMO, say "You're playing the victim card." It creates a situation in which marginalized people have no way to speak about their marginalization without it being rendered invisible.

Jean Kazez said...

Greta,

In your post it seems to me that you dismiss out of hand a whole host of possible criticisms, not just the person who says "that's playing the victim card" and leaves it at that. That's what I gathered from this passage--

But if we do talk about this oppression and marginalization and bigotry? We get accused of “playing the victim card.” We get accused of making up the marginalization, or exaggerating it, or going out of our way to look for it, or twisting innocent events to frame them in this narrative of victimhood, or trying to manipulate people into giving us our way by scoring sympathy points we haven’t earned.

In the third sentence you gloss accusing someone of "playing the victim card" in terms of various other specific accusations--accusing someone of exaggerating, accusing them of manipulating, etc. etc. So it looks to me like you're dismissing all sorts of possible criticisms as just part of the same fairly empty "trope". That strikes me as dismissing an awful lot of potentially respectable scrutiny.