We received a comment last week that I’m posting here with some additional thoughts. That’s because it’s a response that you may well have heard when you’ve tried to address a sexist remark or taken action to end these comments at home, school, or work:
Sexist remarks can also be made by women towards men. In fact, it’s my belief that women are more likely to get away with being sexist, because it’s more carefully played, not as obviously detected, nor do men feel the need to call it out as much. If you look up sexist in any dictionary, it does not exclude women from being sexist nor should it.
I agree that it’s possible for women to make sexist remarks about men, though the impact of those remarks is far different from those targeting women (more below about this). We’ve said elsewhere that accepting and communicating stereotypes about men (even teasing jibes such as those that assume men don’t like to clean or talk about feelings) perpetuates sexism. And if the reader who sent us this note is a man who has felt he’s been the target of sexist comments by women, we hope he can use this site as a place to share ideas for ending sexist remarks, whatever their genesis.
In my experience, comments that belittle men’s abilities and character based on their gender are quite rare. (In fact, the only studies that I could locate about sexist comments directed at men focused on comments made by straight men about gay men.) Most important, sexist comments about men that are designed to call into question their competence for positions of authority are rarer still.
Take the 2008 Presidential campaign—a contest for perhaps the most powerful position in the world. There were 15 candidates across the two parties: 14 men and 1 woman. If sexist comments really did work both ways, you’d expect the record to show 14 times as many sexist comments directed at male versus female candidates. Of course that’s not what happened. I invite our readers to submit evidence of a single sexist comment, joke, or product directed at the male candidates and will happily stand corrected if one is identified. By contrast, Hillary Clinton was subjected to at least 25 sexist slurs, according to the National Organization for Women’s excellent catalog here. (NOW’s count is conservative since they included only comments by the major media—they didn’t document the numerous sexist products, comments, and signs that supporters of the other candidates directed at Clinton.)
Why the imbalance? It’s blindingly obvious: sexist comments are used to frame women in a negative light so as to challenge the legitimacy of their holding positions of authority.
If the day comes that we have a U.S. Senate made up of 83 women and 17 men, 44 consecutive female Presidents, 487 female CEOs running the nation’s 500 largest companies, and men earning 78 cents on the dollar compared with women, I will happily join efforts to address sexist comments directed at men. Because then those remarks will be doing real damage to men’s equal access to opportunity. Of course, the reality today is exactly the reverse.
I’d love to hear from readers about how you handle responses along the lines of “women can be sexist too,” especially when they are used to challenge your attempts to address a sexist remark.
Steve
