Right after we launched this site, Steve’s mother sent him an incredibly thoughtful e-mail, sharing some of her reactions to what we had posted. We had agreed to share responses to the site, so he passed it along to me.
What caught my attention was her comment about one of our strategies. We had suggested checking your reaction to a sexist comment by asking, “Would a reasonable person consider the remark sexist?”
She suggested that answering that question might not always be so easy—especially because we often become acclimated to unhealthy climates, in this instance a culture riddled with sexist commentary. “When a frog is placed in a pot of cold water on a hot stove burner,” she wrote, “it acclimates itself as the water slowly heats up. The frog, who could jump out of the pot, adapts, thereby colluding in his own demise.”
That story resonated deeply with a feminist friend who has spent more than a decade living in the Deep South. Over time, she found herself learning to ignore sexist comments and the associated style of male/female interactions that she encounters daily. It was, she said, the only way to survive in circumstances in which the alternative left her feeling combative or alone much of the time. She recognizes the emotional cost of this collusion, however, and wonders about the tipping point between silence and loss.
So, tell us about your experience—have you become so acclimated to sexist comments that you don’t even hear them, let alone respond in ways that might effect change?
Do women collude in our own “demise” every time that we duck a sexist remark?
And what is the psychic cost to men who say they support gender equality, yet fail to stick up for women who have been targeted by sexist remarks—or to use their position to change the status quo?
Have things really changed as much as feminists and progressives had hoped, or have we simply become acclimated to the sexist words and culture around us?
What can we do, especially when living in communities in which sexist remarks are commonplace, to help change the conversation?
Cynthia
