As we say goodbye to 2009, it is a good time to reflect on the progress we’ve made with respect to sexist remarks. Although at a national level, our country experienced something of a reprieve this year from the relentless sexism that permeated 2008’s political campaign, sexist comments continued unabated on the air, in the office, and in social settings.
The good news is that there appear to be more feminist bloggers who are countering sexist comments and suggesting new approaches for dealing with people who seek to keep women in their place. (Or maybe we are just more aware of feminist bloggers this year.) Their blogs provide a place where progressive women and men can jointly struggle with the challenges inherent in redefining our culture, and we are proud to count ourselves among them.
Quite frankly, we launched Stop Sexist Remarks: Creating Change One Conversation at a Time because we were astounded at how sexist language remained so permissible during the last decade. We decided that we needed both a top-down and bottom-up approach to creating change in the way we talk about women and girls because no feminist organization, national or otherwise, could do this alone. Change really does begin with each of us—particularly with regard to redefining gender roles and opportunities by choosing new and more positive ways to interact with one another.
Since the site’s inception in November 2008, we have posted our stories, your stories, and strategies for dealing with the sexist remarks that we all encounter in everyday life. People from more than 30 countries have stopped by the site, and we have a small but loyal following on Twitter (a special thanks to Jennifer, who has been with us since our early tweets).
During the past year, we reached out to groups that share our vision of a culture that values women and men equally. The very sweet site helpothers.org, which calls itself a “portal dedicated to small acts of kindness,” agreed to include our strategies for stopping sexist remarks (more gently labeled on their site as “negative comments”) in their list of “kindness ideas.” And a contributing writer for BlogHer posted an article that shared our Top Three Things You Can Do to Stop Sexist Remarks.
More recently, our post Setting Boundaries in 15 Words or Less was picked up by two feminist blogs in the United Kingdom (The f word: Contemporary UK Feminism, and the Penny Red Blogspot), the latter saying: “An exciting-looking new blog, Stop Sexist Remarks, is here to help, with tips to challenge bigotry and stop sexist jibes in their tracks.” More important, their readers left a trail of comments dissecting our strategies for responding to sexist remarks and suggesting new ones.
We have learned in the past 2 years that we may not always agree with each other about what works in responding to sexist remarks—you need only take a look at the comments about our post on the f word blog to know that we approach life’s challenges in different ways. Yet we also know that each of us makes a difference every time that we question sexist comments, in whatever style works best for us in the moment.
Which brings us back to where we started—the creation of Stop Sexist Remarks as a site where we can work together to figure out how to change the socially pervasive notion that it is all right to demean women through subtle humor (“Lighten up, I was just joking”), teasing (“Oh, don’t be so sensitive”), and directly offensive comments (with media personalities often being the worst offenders). As Steve pointed out last week, humor is not the intent of sexist jokes, and teasing generally is not intended to make people feel good.
So resolve to speak up this year—forget about the feelings of people who don’t seem to be concerned about yours (you will never make everyone happy, and 2010 is as good a time as any to stop trying), and engage those who do care in a conversation about how to stop sexist remarks. Then come back and share your ideas with us.
Thanks to everyone who visited our site this year—we hope that you will visit often during 2010.
Happy New Year!!
Cynthia and Steve
