Apparently, after reading Newsweek’s April 26^th cover story about how the current recession has left many men feeling shamed and powerless, Mulhern composed a letter to his son Jack, which was printed in the May 1^st edition of the magazine. He talks poignantly about what happens when a couple’s career paths shift from the traditional model, as theirs did, sharing both his initial feelings of vulnerability and the ensuing “tremendous gains.”

I’d say more—but the fact is—I can’t say it better than Mulhern, as exemplified by the following statements from his letter: “You need not fear strong women, or dismiss gentle men,” and “A strong man, Jack, is not threatened by others’ greatness. He’s comfortable with his own.”

Mulhern closes his letter to Jack by saying, “It is a great time to be a man.” I love his positive conclusions about the value of evolving gender roles, and I am going to seek out more examples of courageous men to share on this site. In fact, this might be an approach worthy of our consideration—spending less time responding to the sexist commentary of the small-minded, the misinformed, or the intentionally cruel—and more time supporting the men who understand that real equality for women will only exist when there are also new life choices for men.

The women’s movement had (and continues to have) a powerful and positive impact on the lives of women and girls here and around the globe. Now men like Mulhern are hoping to do the same for the boys.

Cynthia

p.s. Mulhern writes about leadership at danmulhern.com; see his site for information on his new project: StrongMenSpeak.

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You’ve told us that what you most need are practical tools for addressing sexist remarks—easy-to-use resources that can help you start creating change today. So we’re taking time out to convert our blog into a website that offers that kind of assistance. Though we won’t be blogging regularly from here on, we’ll soon be back at this address with a reorganized site. If you’d like to be alerted when it’s live, please click here.

Let us know if there are specific resources you’d like us to include, and come back in spring 2012 to visit our new site.

And in the meantime, check out our current Getting Started and Take Action sections. We hope you’ll continue to educate family members, friends, neighbors, and co-workers about why stopping sexist remarks is important and what they can do to help.

Steve and Cynthia

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Two sociologists from Wichita State University released an analysis in 2009 of men’s and women’s employment after a layoff. It turns out that women have a harder time getting a job after they’ve been let go than do men. But some women do worse than others. Single women without children fare about as well as men, according to the study. But women with children, in the words of the researchers, “have a greater burden to prove that they’re committed to their job as opposed to being committed to their family.” And it appears that employers are holding women—but not men—to that criteria.

Could it be then that some of the most damaging forms of sexist expression are those that imply that women have primary responsibility for child care? That men shouldn’t have to think about the impact on their careers when making decisions about child bearing? That when a couple does have a child, it’s the woman who should compromise? It’s those ideas that give rise to books like this one asking whether women might be better off to choose early in their lives between having a child or a career. That is the wrong (and quite sexist) question—the right one is why it’s only women who have to decide.

Keep the Wichita study in mind the next time you hear a cutting remark about couples that have stay-at-home dads (right now, such couples make up less than 1 percent of the total; couples with stay-at-home moms comprise at least 19 percent). People who take seriously the idea that both fathers and mothers can assume the primary caretaker role are setting an example that is essential to improving opportunities for our country’s women and girls. And since many men might prefer to spend more time with their children, they’re also widening the choices available to parents of both sexes.

Steve

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Such slurs directed against women in power are all too common. We heard them when Janet Reno was head of the Department of Justice. We heard sexist brickbats of all types directed at Hillary Clinton. Rush Limbaugh called Senator Mary Landrieu a “high-class prostititute,” and Senator Harry Reid called fellow Senator Kirsten Gillebrand the “hottest member of the Senate.”

No one doubts that these accomplished women can ignore such comments and move on—they wouldn’t be where they are if they hadn’t endured a career of rising above demeaning remarks. Comments like these happen every day in our workplaces, neighborhoods, and families. And they do real damage—a study last fall found that when it comes to female politicians, for example, slurring the candidate with sexist names such as “ice queen” and “mean girl” undercuts her political standing far more than does criticism of her policies.

So if what happened to Judge Lokuta occurred as reported, then someone in that crowd should have had the courage to say, “No, that’s inappropriate,” “Hey, that’s not cool,” or “Hey, leave the sexism at home buddy.”

Judge Lokuta is standing up for herself, but she shouldn’t have to do that alone. Every time that someone else has the fortitude to speak up, it gives another person the courage to follow their example the next time. And conversely, it makes potential perpetrators more fearful of launching  a sexist slur—because next time, they just might find themselves as the object of disfavor.

Steve

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We have encouraged visitors to this site to find their voices when confronted with sexist comments, but we acknowledge that might be a lot easier said than done. So this week, we offer up a few suggestions for taking action that don’t require you to directly confront anyone for making a sexist remark:

For one year, put a nickel in a jar every time you hear someone makes a sexist comment. At the end of each year, tally up the money and write a check for the amount to the National Organization for Women (or your favorite women’s group) and send it off with note asking them to use the money to help end sexist remarks.

Write to your elected leaders, who have a legal and moral obligation to represent both genders equally and fairly, and let them know that you want them to put an end to sexist remarks during campaigns, media appearances, and when they are governing.

Talk to your kids (in a manner appropriate to their age) about the harmful impact of sexist remarks on girls (their sisters, themselves, their friends). We may not completely stop sexism in our lifetime, but we certainly can put our hope and energy into the next generation being able to do so.

These are three simple things that you can do without risking a friendship, a job, or family relationships. Choose one or all three and get started today. Take action!!

Cynthia

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Regardless of your position on abortion, don’t you find it odd that a woman’s right to choose is so often positioned as the central wedge issue during government budget negotiations, and political and organizational campaigns, fundraising, and other maneuvering? It is an effective strategy because abortion is such an emotionally charged word. More than a decade ago, a group of famous women ran an ad that displayed their names under the heading: “I had an abortion.” The goal of the campaign was to make the word less powerful when used to define women in relation to a highly personal decision that most do not make lightly.

We have said it before and we will say it again—words matter. This is especially true when they are used to divert attention from more important issues (e.g. focusing budget negotiations on funding for abortion rather than what is needed to restore our country’s crumbling infrastructure) or to divide us into opposing factions with little opportunity for compromise. Apparently our leaders believe that women’s control over their lives is a legitimate bargaining chip, and their use of emotionally-loaded language to talk about abortion does little to advance thoughtful discourse on an issue they claim to care about.

Our congressional leaders need to learn that negotiation does not mean war and that doing your job correctly does not mean letting tasks slide to the last possible minute and then creating diversionary tactics as a cover for poor performance. Just imagine your supervisor’s reaction if you and a colleague declared yourself at an impasse and felt it best to let the work of the company come to a grinding halt. Most important, they need to learn that good governance, like all good leadership, requires more than highly charged rhetoric.

We can change this—starting with the seemingly small but oh so powerful act of speaking up when someone around you makes a sexist remark. We can change this by demanding that our leaders use responsible language when discussing sensitive issues rather than inflaming the sensibilities of everyone around them. We can change this by holding elected officials accountable for doing their jobs and letting them know that we want a lot less speechifying and a lot more positive action.

We can change this. Let’s start now.

Cynthia

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Doing something about easy access to automatic weapons might help. But failing that, one academic has an idea for another place to start. Michele Paludi, Director of the School of Management at New York’s Union College, thinks that schools need to take a new approach to violence prevention. 

Paludi believes that incidents of intimidation and violence on campus have reached epidemic proportions—one of every 20 college women is raped, and 20 percent of college students experience intimate partner violence, for example. Her research argues that those acts, and crimes like mass shootings, become more common when “lower order” forms of campus violence—like sexual harassment, sexist remarks, hazing, and bullying—are ignored. She notes that 20 to 80 percent of college women report being targets of sexual harassment by peers or faculty. 

Prevention, she argues, requires that colleges establish safe, nonretaliatory reporting procedures—effective and enforced policies about things like sexual harassment and sexist remarks, and training programs for the entire campus, including faculty. (Those ideas are especially pertinent since the Obama administration’s recent announcement of new requirements for colleges and universities regarding preventing sexual harassment and sexual violence on campus.) 

If you’re considering working with your campus to establish policies designed to stop sexist forms of expression, you might consider drawing on her research. Her book Ivory Power: Sexual Harassment on Campus received the 1992 Myers Center Award for Outstanding Book on Human Rights in the United States. 

If Paludi is right that ignoring sexist remarks, harassment, and other forms of intimidation makes violence more likely, then faculty and administrators ignore it at their peril. 

Steve

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“It’s hard to fathom today, but for most of human history, and even into our own time, it was simply assumed that women had no need to acquire identities or rights of our own — except, of course, those enjoyed by virtue of our relationships with men.”

Chessler’s article is worth reading for its brief history of women’s rights and to remind ourselves of how slowly the wheels of change turn. She helps us to understand that some of our earlier (and most important) victories were cloaked in the concept of protectionism—focusing on taking care of women rather than  promoting their rights—to ensure acceptance of the changes.

Most important, Chessler’s article reminds us that we stand on the shoulders of women like Mary Wollstonecraft, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Margaret Sanger, who dared to speak about women’s rights in a time when it was unimaginable to do so. I second Chessler’s impassioned plea that we must not let them down by allowing current political forces to turn back the clock.

We stand in the middle of so many generations of women—our powerful predecessors who took enormous personal risks to help redefine the roles of women, and our daughters who  never knew a time when women were not allowed to go to school or work outside the home. We need to seize this moment to keep the dream of gender equality alive.

Imagine that it is 1848 and you believe that women should have the right to vote. Stanton did and she launched the suffrage movement. Then imagine what might happen if you decided today (almost 200 years later) to speak up about sexist remarks—either in the moment that they happen or by working with other women to create change in the educational, religious, and political institutions and systems that influence our lives.

Just imagine.

Cynthia

End note: As I was writing this post, I heard that Geraldine Ferraro had passed away (March 26^th). I remember the night in 1984 that she was nominated as the Vice Presidential candidate of the Democrat party (almost unimaginable at the time). I sat on my sofa, with tears streaming down my face (as I later learned so many women across America did), thrilled at the very sight of this smart, articulate woman and excited about what her candidacy meant for all women. I got choked up again today at the loss of her. But Ferraro’s life reminds me of the power one woman has to change the world—living as if we can is the best way to honor her legacy.

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Of the five women profiled in the article, all five lost their jobs, one is in a child custody battle, and all were the target of volumes of hate mail. Women speaking openly about their sexuality is a sure ticket, it seems, to discrimination and abuse. 

And how does that compare with the experiences of men who do the same? As the article notes, male sex blogger Tucker Max has been exempted from such treatment. And try reading Norman Mailer or Henry Miller sometime—their graphic, if literary, descriptions are as explicit as it gets. 

That situation mirrors what happens in another arena: the unequal treatment of men and women involved in the sex industry. The women caught in the trade are routinely prosecuted at far higher rates than their male customers. In 2007, for example, Louisiana Republican Senator David Vitter was found to have been a client of a prostitution ring. He was never prosecuted and still doesn’t admit to doing anything illegal. But Deborah Jeane Palfrey, the madam who ran that ring, faced five to six years in prison after her conviction—she committed suicide before she could be sentenced. 

There’s a word that captures that double standard, one so often employed to degrade and delegitimize women—the word “slut.” That it’s only applicable to women indicates that it’s a proxy for the different treatment afforded to men’s and women’s sexuality. And when it’s used, it has real-world consequences for women and girls, as the Bust article shows. 

So if we hear that word, I propose that we respond much as we would if we heard the “n” word as applied to race: “You know what? That’s a really offensive term.”

I’m a fan of words, but this one has to go.

Steve

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It occurred to me while reading the mother’s post that often what we think we want and what we really need are two very different things. The post-er wrote: 

“i was called a silly woman by a teacher at my sons high school. I made a complaint to the school. he admitted it. he also told me i was driving to slow for him as he was behind me on the rd . but i want an apology from him in person. and I want more done.  what shall i do now, as i feel the school have brushed it under the carpet.”

First off, there are very few things worse (language-wise) than being called a “silly woman.” That type of remark—tinged with 50s era sexism—can be hard to get past. While the facts of this situation from the teacher’s perspective are unknown to us, we can pretty much assume that calling people names is out of line for most professionals. And referencing a person’s gender in doing so is particularly inappropriate (just imagine the teacher calling someone a silly black person).

The problem is that while asking for an apology may make the post-er (or us) feel mildly better in the moment—isn’t it better in the long run for her to work with the school to ensure that sexist comments are not acceptable under any conditions? This is particularly important if the school is choosing to look the other way, as our post-er suggests.

Shifting from a focus on what we want (a remedy for our own hurt feelings, and yes, sexist comments can be very hurtful) to what we need (systemic changes in the language used to describe women) can be liberating. We no longer need to waste time or energy worrying about what people will say to or about us when we respond to a single sexist remark. Instead, we can take on the more important challenge of helping community institutions create positive environments for women and girls. Let’s face it—it is far easier for someone to mock you privately or in a small group for challenging their sexist comments than it is for them to stand up at the next PTA meeting and argue against a policy that will protect young girls (their daughter, perhaps).

We therefore encourage the post-er to check out the Taking Action in Local Schools section of this site. She might begin by reaching out to like-minded women in her neighborhood, building a community of parents and teachers who are interested in exploring how to end sexist language at the school in question. We also hope our readers will share their ideas for dealing with the post-er’s situation and take a closer look at the school environments in which their daughters, nieces, or granddaughters are growing up.

Accepting an apology that you are due can make you feel like a million bucks. Creating a sexist- free zone for girls in schools across the globe: priceless.

Cynthia

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