Sunday, April 21, 2013

bool Person.isEqual(Person b) { return true? }


Gender equality is certainly getting a lot of air-time lately. I read Rock Paper Shotgun's article on the subject today. Then I spent a while reading the reddit thread that's substituting for RPS's own comments. Then I read some hilariously sexist blog responses. And wow, this is an incredibly difficult subject to think clearly about.

Let's start with some unarguable stuff - Nobody can seriously claim that sexism doesn't exist. I mean, just look at the hate-filled comments on any webpage that brings up this topic.

But that in itself doesn't mean much. Ten minutes on the internet should be enough to show you that all opinions are held. Heck, some people believe that it's a good idea to fly a plane into a tower block, bomb a marathon or shoot up a school. People have always done horrible things to one another. In the end, some people will always be jerks, and worse; I can't imagine any movement would realistically hope to change that.

So what, then, is the real goal of feminism? (I'm aware that there are conflicting factions; just trying to boil down to the essence here.) Now that the inequalities built into the legal system have been mostly abolished, what exactly would constitute a success here?

Most of the material I've seen (such as Anna Sarkeesian's controversial (though in my opinion, coherent and well-written) videos) tries to point out what we might call "accidental sexism": widespread patterns of behaviour, by both men and women, which are not maliciously done, and often well-intentioned, but nevertheless contribute to gender inequality.

However, this is where it gets awkward. When we get away from obvious negative stereotypes, what actually constitutes sexism? Men and women, when you get right down to it, are really not equal. They inherently have a different average life expectancy, height, weight, strength, aggressiveness, a different pattern of mental skills (for example, women tend to score higher on language, and men on spatial awareness), and so on... and most fundamentally, a different relationship with childbirth. In fact, the difference between maternity leave and paternity leave is one of the few remaining gender-specific laws in many countries.

Is it sexist to say that men are physically different from women, or to act in accordance with such differences? Surely not - if a doctor advised his female patients to maintain the same BMI as his male ones, he might be liable for a malpractice suit. (Well, probably not. But he certainly wouldn't be in accordance with standard scientific advice.)

And yet, and yet... it's a slippery slope, isn't it? So many of the differences between men and women are not inherent, physical or genetically based things, but actually cultural conventions - to pick a less-controversial example, the association of girls with the colour pink. It's clearly arbitrary: study different cultures and historical periods, and you find different color associations; or a lack thereof.

So let's explore that. Is it sexist to associate girls with the colour pink? I can't see that this is inherently bad - no more sexist than associating girls with the word "girl", or with the female symbol . I mean, yes, I've certainly seen complaints about the pink-saturated "Lego for girls" range, but I don't think those objections are about the pinkness per se: it's the implicit declaration that the other toys are "Lego for boys" that upsets people.

Which leads to an interesting thought experiment - what if they made a "Lego for Native Americans"?

It's easy enough to imagine a Lego set about Native Americans: you'd have Lego totem poles, minifigs holding bows and wearing head-dresses, and little Lego buffaloes. I'll be surprised if it hasn't been made already. Oh, hey, look, it has:




However, can you imagine a Lego set specifically targeted at Native American children? To be honest I don't know enough about their culture to even imagine what that would look like... but clearly, its mere existence could be taken as an insult. (If that doesn't ring your alarm bells enough, can you imagine "Lego for African Americans"?)

Ok, so we seem to have a valuable distinction here! Lego about Native Americans seems fine; Lego for Native Americans seems obviously racist.

...which, in turn, begins to explain why the pinkness is a problem: it's just a signal, very clearly, that we're dealing with Lego for girls, not merely Lego about girls.

So let's explore that. Why is it sexist to make toys for a female audience? I mean, marketing folk always identify a target market for their products - "cat lovers", "people with families", "people who ride bikes"..... ah, but in asking the question, it answers itself. Target markets are about identifying what people do, and/or what they care about. If your target market is "women", or "native americans", have you identified anything about what they do or care about? All you've identified is a stereotype.

Compare "Lego for Chinese people" (which seems like an obviously racist concept) with "Supermarkets for Chinese people" (which are commonplace and inoffensive). What's the difference there? Simple enough: supermarkets for chinese people are actually catering to something real, not just a stereotype. They're primarily "Supermarkets for people who need ingredients for chinese food".

So that's the key; it's sexist to market things to a stereotype of women's needs, but it's not sexist to market things to real women's needs. ("Tampons for women", anyone)?

And the thought of things "for women" leads to another thought - the stupid "men's magazines", and "men's TV channels". Clearly, making something "for men" is just as poorly-defined as "for women". Are these channels sexist? Their idea of what men are like certainly seems to pander to stereotypes - obsessed with sport, cars, tits and violence. Which means... yes, I suppose they must be sexist. (And heck, that's even before we consider their idea of what women are like.)

So let's explore that. I had to deduce that this portrayal of men was sexist! Why does it feel so different from sexism towards women? I guess it's partly because the feminism movement has sensitized us to such issues as they apply to women. But underneath that, more fundamentally... stereotypes of men just don't seem like a threat. I don't think any men go around in fear of being dismissed on the basis of that kind of gender stereotype - "oh, a man; you must be aggressive and obsessed with your football team". It doesn't feel as though the men's magazines are really affecting my life by portraying men this way.

And why is that? Well, fundamentally, I think men just get portrayed in so many different ways in the media, and in culture in general, that no one portrayal seems universal. For every "football hooligan" stereotype, there are plenty of "scientists", "poets", "soldiers", and so on: so many different portrayals that they don't affect the perception of the gender as a whole. Honestly, I find stereotypes of awkward nerds more threatening than stereotypes of "men" as a whole.

And that's interesting too - why is that? Simply because "awkward nerd" describes me better: I feel like parts of it apply to me, and by the nature of stereotypes, the parts that fit you make them stick to you. And that makes the rest feel threatening. I imagine some rural americans likewise feel threatened by the "redneck" stereotype. "Yes, my family lives in a trailer, I like country music and I drive a pickup truck; why would that mean I'm toothless, unemployed or inbred?"

Ok then - what happens when there's a stereotype of your entire gender? "Yes, I am female and have breasts; why would that mean that I'm a passive participant in my life, or that my best hope is to be pretty enough to make a rich man fall in love and marry me?" I can see why that would be threatening. And the better it fits an individual, the more threatening it becomes.

What is the goal of feminism? I guess I see the objective now: to weaken that stereotype. It's unrealistic to silence the jeering comments - remember, all opinions are held and people will never stop being jerks - but it is realistic to change girls'  perception of themselves. They need to see a range of female role-models.

In fact, not even that - there should be less of a perception that female role-models and male role-models need to be separate things. Anything that people do professionally is a credible life for anyone who can do that thing. Girls need to see that for every "football hooligan" stereotype they could grow up to be, there are "scientists", "poets", "soldiers", and so on. You know; people.

Ok, this all seems nice. But there's one last question that just won't stop nagging me - is that kind of equality a realistic goal? We opened with a discussion about the fact that women are actually different from men. Doesn't that imply there are some jobs, some goals, that are genuinely appropriate/realistic for one gender but not for the other? Well, sure, there are a few obvious ones. Sperm donor, for example, or surrogate mother.

But that's not exactly an interesting example. What about those differences in weight, aggressiveness, height? Surely they count for something? Well, there's something to keep in mind there - those are averages. The tallest women are far taller than the average man. The smallest men are far smaller than the average women. If a job requires someone tall, it's going to exclude a whole bunch of men as well as a whole bunch of women. So that's hardly a cause for excluding all women.

If you read this far, thanks for sticking with me. I learned a lot in writing this essay; I hope you enjoyed it.

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