Even though I’m a sexist, I try to be the least bad kind. But there’s something like a baseline of sexism which is hard to get below. This baseline is what is known as institutionalised sexism. It’s the way in which everybody, the world, society as such is sexist. The most powerful tool of this universal sexism, the way in which it affects even the most liberal college student, is unconscious bias.
Imagine a work meeting. Your department had a major screw-up, and co-workers are busy shifting the blame away from themselves. Suddenly, your male boss stands up from his chair and starts to shout. How do you feel? Now imagine the exact same scenario, but this time the boss who starts shouting is female. How do you feel? If I’m being honest, the shouting woman makes a completely differently impression on me as the shouting man. It’s the difference between “Damn, he’s really angry this time” and “What’s wrong with her?”
Why is that? Isn’t it sexist to take a man’s anger seriously but not a woman’s? It is. So does that make me a sexist? At this point I would shrug and say, “Well this is simply how it is. I don’t want to be sexist but a shouting man just means something different than a shouting woman. I can’t help it.”
But is that a valid excuse? No.
First of all, it would be the ultimate sexist crime to suggest that the anatomical differences between men and women determine the effect of their shouting, so that we are correct in taking the one seriously and not the other. A more forgivable approach would be to say that certain attitudes about men and women are unfortunately so entrenched in society that we have adopted them blindly, like a child adopts its mother tongue.
But I can’t really claim to be a victim of these societal attitudes, as I reproduce them every single day. Saying “This is simply how it is” is at best a lazy reproduction of the status quo, at worst a perversely gleeful affirmation of it (like soldiers who find a perverse pleasure in carrying out violent orders, free of any accountability).
So the only way out is to admit that yes, I am a sexist. There are now two traps waiting for me, both called Guilt. The first one is that of shared guilt. Since everybody else is sexist too, can it really be that bad? Who would judge me personally? The second trap is a vain dramatisation of my guilt that aims to shift the focus on me, rather than on those I have failed.
As an ethical being, it’s not only your responsibility to be good, but also to define for yourself what it means to be “good”. In the face of institutionalised sexism, this is the ethical heroism that men need to show more often.
Maarten Schumacher 