It’s a fact of history that bigotry in its various forms—sexism, racism, homophobia—is a potent tool for diverting the attention of people who are vulnerable. In the South, white-owned corporations used racism to divide the white and African American working classes and prevent unionization. At the height of the Dust Bowl and Great Depression in Oklahoma, voters elected a governor who had run on a platform of moving Jewish people and African Americans out of the state for allegedly stealing jobs and resources that could benefit poor whites. And as Susan Faludi argues in Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man, some of the backlash against feminism by working-class American men has been the product of misplaced anger at shrinking wages, layoffs, and a world they perceive to be moving on without them.
That understanding helps me to have a bit more compassion in handling sexist remarks. Why compassion? After all, not everyone is being manipulated by someone else, and we do make choices about what we think. But we are also shaped to a large degree by our experiences, and we all would be different people if we had someone else’s background.
The authors of the 1997 book Encountering Bigotry argue that change happens when we are able to have real conversations with people who express bigotry. They think that real conversations have two parts. Part 1 consists of being genuinely curious about why the other person has chosen to express themselves in a bigoted way. As offensive as we find their expression, this means asking questions like, “I’m curious why you would say something like that?” “What is that based on?” “What experiences have led you to think that way?” Part 2 consists of communicating your values, expressing in personal terms why equality is important to you. Why do you care about sexist remarks? How do such comments affect people you care about—your daughter, your sister, your wife, you?
When asked why I care about stopping sexist remarks, I talk about having witnessed discrimination against my mother in a church that we belonged to when I was in high school. At age 16, I and a few friends my age had been asked to serve on a committee, one that my mother happened to lead because she’d been asked to do so by the lone progressive-minded church leader. It was the first time that a woman had taken a leadership role in our church. She had clear leadership abilities—people commented on her public speaking skills and her ability to facilitate a committee discussion and bring a group to consensus. But the backlash soon came—a male member of the committee was unhappy that a woman was heading up the committee, and told her so. He rounded up support from other men who believed that it was not appropriate—based on their religious understanding, they said—for a woman to be in a leadership role.
Ultimately, enough people respected my mother’s skills that she stayed in her role until the committee’s work was finished. But the injustice of it offended my friends and me—how could men oppose someone so clearly gifted only because she wasn’t the right gender?
We all have key experiences that help explain why we care about stopping sexist remarks. If we can share those experiences, and listen to the stories of those making sexist remarks, it’s possible to create change one conversation at a time.
Steve
