Eight years ago, when I was a student, I remember going to the bakery to buy some bread. The bread cost 2.85 but I only had a twenty note. The cashier asked me if I had any change, I said sorry, I didn’t. The cashier, visibly annoyed, started counting out my change while complaining that it was only the beginning of her shift and already she was running out of change. I felt guilty and awkward to be there, and vowed to next time get my bread at the supermarket, though it didn’t taste as good.
Walking home though, I started to feel angry. It wasn’t my fault the cashier was running out of change, why did she want to make me feel bad about it? She should have been happy to have a customer, but instead she made it so I didn’t want to go back there. Coming home to my dorm I decided to tell the whole story to my neighbour, who was outraged. “You know”, he said, “only a woman could have done that. A man wouldn’t have cared about the change.”
I was relieved that he verbalised the thought I didn’t even dare admit to having. I immediately, emphatically agreed. We looked at each other like we uncovered a well-kept secret. Despite all we had been taught about the evils of sexism, we had found the undeniable proof that there was something inherently detestable in women.
Looking back on it, it seems pretty clear that all I found was an excuse to justify my hatred towards women. My hatred of women was unconscious, I didn’t know that I had it until I found a reason to express it, and felt relieved doing so. I didn’t know the real reason I unconsciously hated women and I still do not know today. Which raises the question: do I still hate women? Spontaneously I would answer no, of course not, that’s ridiculous. But maybe I just learned to hide it better from myself?
I sometimes like to tell people the story of the worst person I have ever met. The worst person I have ever met was the mother of my ex-girlfriend, who at 50 reinvented herself as a lesbian, buddhist, vegetarian mosaic-artist. This is already plenty reason for me to hate somebody, but on top of that she was so self-involved that she couldn’t spare any love for her daughter, who desperately needed it.
A mother who doesn’t love her child is a terrible thing, but what about a father who doesn’t love his child? Isn’t it just as bad? It should be, but somehow I feel it’s not. Sexism has a tendency to attach itself to every criticism levelled at a woman, no matter if the criticism is valid or not. Does that mean women should never be criticised? No, because luckily there’s an easy way to detect this sexism that sneakily tries to hitch a ride on valid criticism: just imagine you were criticising a man.
Even when I discover a hidden sexist motivation for what I thought was perfectly valid criticism, I still don’t know what I’m fighting. Why do I hate women? Is it some deep childhood trauma or is it just institutionalised sexism? To what degree am I guilty then? If there is a God, how will he judge me? I tell myself I do more than most to fight my hatred, but I get the feeling that it makes it even worse, because now I feel proud for not hating women as much as some others supposedly do.
Maarten Schumacher 