What Happens Next: A Gallimaufry

melancholic romantic comic cynic. bi & genderqueer. fantasy writer. sysrae on ao3.

Anonymous asked: My best friend is sexist, I've tried talking to him, but he doesn't listen. There was a time when issues of gender and sexism weren't really on my radar, but then I found your blog and my eyes were opened to a lot of the sexism I took for granted. Now I really care about matters of gender and sexism, and as such my best friend's views are getting harder to bare. Are really not sure what to do, any advice?

Firstly, I’m touched to hear that my blog has been so helpful to you - thanks! It’s always tough when the people we care about have views at odds with our own, so my sympathies for the situation you’re in. Without knowing your friend’s personality or the specific manner of his sexism, I’m not sure how useful I can be, but here are some tips that hopefully might help:

  1. A lot of the time, people who are casually sexist are simply parroting what they’ve been told by others and by society, or at the very least, haven’t stopped to think their arguments through. Try to unpick the logic behind their language, and maybe you’ll get them to consider that things they’ve been saying offhand are actually offensive.
  2. Combat stereotypes with knowledge of awesome ladies. Women’s history is all too frequently erased, and sometimes, a significant part of the reason why people believe women are inherently bad at certain things (like maths, medicine, journalism, sports, war) is because they’ve simply never heard of any who’ve excelled in those areas. Being able to reference the achievements of women like Ada Lovelace, Nelly Bly, Bessie Coleman, Marie Colvin, Mary Seacole, Nancy Wake, Aung San Suu Kyi and Cathy Freeman (for instance) might just be enough to make people stop and think. And if they want to argue that such women are just exceptions to the rule? Then argue that even if that were true, society would still be better off encouraging them (and others like them) rather than assuming they were incapable and trying to put them down.
  3. It’s a sad contradiction that a lot of sexists end up being so simply because they think we already live in an equal society, and therefore don’t see why not all jokes and issues are created equal. Statistics can be useful: unless they actually believe that women are inherently lesser than men (and if they do, my sympathies - that’s a much harder battle to fight!) the fact that women are still paid less for the same work as men, require better qualifications to be hired for the same jobs as men, are discriminated against by employers as mothers where men are praised for being fathers, and in general get the short shrift, socially, should give them pause for thought. If women are the intellectual equals of men and have an equal desire to succeed in life, but the balance of society doesn’t reflect this, then contrary to what we might think and hope, we don’t live in a meritocracy. Either women aren’t inherently equal, or something is still stopping us from achieving full equality.
  4. Talk about bias in pop culture. This can be a good one for discussion, as the evidence is literally everywhere. Why are women’s bodies used so heavily to sell things by advertisers? Why do white male action heroes far outnumber those of women or minorities? What sort of stories do TV, films and video games tell about women? Why are there so many male actors with weird looks and varied bodytypes working prominently in Hollywood compared to so few women? This might be the most important step of all: once you start noticing the bias in pop culture, then it’s very hard to stop.

I hope that helps! 

  1. fozmeadows posted this